A recent federal court decision in Western Australia finding that members of the aboriginal Noongar tribe have a legitimate claim to the entire state capital city of Perth reflects growing concern over native title as peoples elsewhere around the globe -- including the U.S. -- seek legal recognition if not restitution of stolen lands.
Residents of Skunkwood Estates in South Florida are hoping they can get the Rancida Development Corp. to change the name of their neighborhood since scores of children have come home complaining that youngsters from nearby communities ridicule them.
But the developers say they must abide by certain restrictions imposed by the Skunkasookee Tribe from whom the land was leased, one of which was to continue honoring the sacred tribal namesake. Like other Southeastern bands, the Skunkasookees revere a particular animal as a tribal totem and protector which in their case is that pungently resourceful black-and-white member of the weasel family.
Tribal Icons
Rancida executives unsuccessfully sought tribal consent to name the development Gator Glade Acres but the Indians were adamant. “Skunkwood Estates” was actually a compromise from “Realm of the Great Skunk Father Who Eats Swamp Grubs” that the tribal elders had originally wanted. Rancida executives managed to convince them that such a name would pose insurmountable marketing problems.
Skunkwood homeowners, many of whom paid upwards of $850,000US for their 6-bedroom ranch houses, say their children are appalled at the prospect of attending the soon-to-be-opened Skunkwood Elementary School. The children say that kids from nearby Sawmill Runoff Lakes (also a Rancida project) are already calling them the Skunkwood stinkers.
“A deal is a deal,” says former NFL place-kicker and tribal attorney Willie “Bullskunk” Holdnose, who insists that the agreed-upon name remain unchanged.
Homeowners likewise are concerned about the tribe’s plans to expand their giant mumblety-peg arena to include a casino on an adjacent 75-acre parcel. The Skunkasookees were the first tribe in the country to foresee the pari-mutuel possibilities of the traditional knife-tossing pastime. Residents say they’re worried about increased traffic congestion and the noise from ambulances called whenever a wild throw nicks onlookers.
Holdnose says the expansion is nobody’s business but the tribal council and Chief Eddie “Skunkwind” Holdnose. Tribal sovereignty over the land is clear, he says, and now that the drive to legalize casinos elsewhere in Florida is stalled, the Skunkasookees will take fullest advantage to benefit the tribe’s 1,492 members.
Meaner than a Junkyard Dogma
Two students from the Nova School of Applied Archaeology happened to be scouring a portion of Tampa landfill last month looking for an accidentally tossed theological Masters thesis on Obscene Essene Essays when they happened upon a startling discovery. There, under a three-meter layer of Domino’s Pizza boxes and carefully wrapped in a September 1896 issue of New York Post, the students uncovered two golden plates inscribed with what looked to be cuneiform markings.
Gustavo Bocanera and Arthur Bialystock-Smythe quickly noted the similarity between this find and descriptions of the famous “lost plates” of Pater Nicholas Piscattaway, the 19th Century founder-prophet of the flourishing Church of Latter-day Land Speculators, whose major tenets include a belief that heavenly paradise is attained only though inspirational discount mortgage debentures and speaking in tongues during closings.
"Pater Nick" receives the miraculous plates from
Saint Moronicus of the Blessed Assessors
in a forest glade outside Stuebenville,
Ohio in 1836.
The “Pater Nick” faith originated in the Midwest but the devout were forced to flee to California by competing revivalist realtors who branded them fiduciary heretics. Most made the journey safely except the tragic 1847 Gonner Party that got as far as Reno. There in a savage blizzard, they became disoriented, drank heavily, gambled away their convertible bonds and in a subsequent fit of guilt, converted to Pentecostalism.
Nova students Gus and Art, who suspected that the Mother Church in Azusa might pay millions for recovery of the fabled plates, hastened to an antiquities dealer in Kissimmee to have them authenticated.
You might imagine their dismay when the objects were found to be nothing more than yellow-bronzed Delaware tags from a nearby rusted out ‘52 Desoto sedan. However the badly soiled copy of the Post was worth four dollars.
The dejected students would have considered their dig an absolute failure were it not for the simultaneous recovery, from a second Domino’s box, of a six-page translation (in original Aramaic) of the notorious late-Mesopotamian tale Salome Does Damascus.
Professor Kurt Stanislaw Jacobi, a native of Southcentral Wallachia, holds a Ph.D. from Comenius University,Bratislava, where he graduated magna cum ondown in 1948. During the late 50's, Dr. Jacobi first postulated his now famous integrated theory of inversional constructs (ITIC) which ultimately made possible the Voyager space probe, microchip Pringles and Madonna’s line of Japanese reversible spandex rainwear.
