Adam Goodes retweeted this link with the comment "interesting".
Which it is.
It's time we draft Aussie Rules to tackle Indigenous mathematics
Describing indigenous children in desert settlements, the writer says:
Preschoolers, only two or three years of age, could confidently name all the cardinal directions by the time they entered school and instantly apply them with almost 100% accuracy no matter what environment they found themselves in ? a learned skill essentially deictic in nature, that most children in our dominant culture Australia are still struggling with at 15 or 16 years of age.
..
One important difference, in relation to the dominant culture of this country, is that a person?s limbs (?left? or ?right?) are not to be regarded as fixed entities in relation to self, as is implicit in the formulations ?left? and ?right?. Rather, they are conceived within a much broader context of spatial relationships with respect to the exterior world. So, in accordance with the specific spatial circumstance, a person might talk about one?s north, south, east or west hand (or leg).
..
When one is continually on the move (or run) within 360? of open space, albeit with the intention of reaching specific goalposts within that space, the formulations of ?left? and ?right? in relation to one?s own body have little or no meaning. This form of spatial apprehension is not restricted to people in the Central or Western Deserts of Australia, but ubiquitous throughout Aboriginal Australia, and as a method of orienteering one?s way through space, survives even where the local languages are faltering.
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