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ABORIGINAL ELDERS RECEIVE APOLOGY From Author of Mutant Message from Down Under"

by Vanessa Gould, The West Australian newspaper - 31 January 1996

HOLLYWOOD action star Steven Seagal has brokered an apology to eight Aboriginal elders from Marlo Morgan, the American author who claimed first-hand experience of a group of unknown Aborigines she called the wild ones.

The New Age author of a best-selling book, Mutant Message From Down Under, claimed she was initiated by the tribe during a four-month walkabout in the central desert.

In an emotional hour-long telephone call to Morgan in New York from Seagal's Hollywood studio on Monday, Morgan admitted for the first time to the eight elders that her work was fiction and a fabrication.

"She sounded really upset, she was really sorry," WA Nyungah delegate Mingli Wanjurri-Nungala said from Los Angeles.

"Most of us said what we felt and also said we didn't want to attack her personally. We just wanted to get rid of this story and all the cultural desecration it has caused".

The group did not want her money or any compensation, just to stop the story.

Morgan made $1.8 million from the first book's publishing rights, is likely to make $3 million from a second volume, and stood to make up to $90 million from lecturing and film rights. The book has been published in 11 languages.

She had written a disclaimer in the second 1994 edition of her book, published by Harper Collins, which said the book was fiction, but based on her experiences in Australia. However she maintained this was only to protect the identity of the tribe.

Dr John Stanton, curator of the Bendt Museum of Anthropology at the University of Western Australia, said the book contained misleading and damaging information about Aboriginal people which had pandered to the gullibility of Americans desperate for New Age ideas.

It included facile ideas such a dolphins, koalas and platypus being sacred to Aborigines in the middle of the desert and culturally denigrating statements which confused intimate and secret details of men's and women's lore.

He was not sure whether the damage the book had done to the overseas image of Aboriginal culture, which was complex, diverse and vibrant, could be ever undone.

Seagal's lawyers were to prepare a written apology from Morgan. The group would hold a press conference in the Los Angeles Press Club today to reveal its contents.

Robert Eggington, of Perth's Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation who has gathered evidence for the trip for 15 months, said from Los Angeles that Morgan's apology would send a message to other New Age authors that Aboriginal people would not remain silent while their culture was exploited.

For further information, please contact:

In Australia: Robert Egginton, Perth's Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation Tel: 011 619 4514977

In the US: Patricia Friedel, Tel: (415) 673-9102 Fax: (415) 788-1119

mailto:mktrecon@iinet.net.au

Jean Matthew Vermont

jmatthew@plainfield.bypass.com

 

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