Blewin'

Blewin'
This flier for an Aboriginal mediation service caught my eye

It seems appropriate to discuss it on Australia Day as the expression of "having a blue" is slang for having a fight.

I guess the decision to write it as "blewin'" avoided misunderstanding if it were "bluein'" or "bluin'" but it did make me think the mediators might be blow-ins, an expression for people who have only recently arrived.

So, "having a blue" seems to have originated in the late Nineteenth Century, possibly gaining popularity based on an observation that Irish were often fighting.

Redheaded people were referred to as "blue" as an ironic joke, which might've started in the mid-Nineteenth Century with migration as part of the Gold Rush.

Given the unions in Australia started around that time and the Eureka flag has a blue background, I wonder if that might've also played a role.

Anyway, there seems to be a semiosis in the flier that draws on multiple layers of meaning across successive waves of migration.

The slang is a substitute for the word "mediation" which originates in Latin during the Fourteenth Century.

Yet the flier is aimed at a group with a much older claim to this land.

And it was printed in 2009, so likely out of date!