- Title: Australian schools lead revival of fading Indigenous languages
- Date: 31st August 2023
- Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) DHARUG LANGUAGE TEACHER, JASMINE SEYMOUR, SAYING: "It's extremely important for all Australians to know the language of place. And so there are over 250 languages, Aboriginal languages in Australia, and having a connection to that language and through to place is really important because when you learn a new language, you also learn a different worldv
- Embargoed: 14th September 2023 02:03
- Keywords: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia First Nations Voice indigenous languages referendum revival
- Location: COFFS HARBOUR, URUNGA, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
- City: COFFS HARBOUR, URUNGA, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
- Country: Australia
- Topics: Asia / Pacific,Race Relations / Ethnic Issues,Society/Social Issues,Editors' Choice
- Reuters ID: LVA00A714526082023RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Whirling barefoot in a sand circle, Clark Webb leads a school of children as they dance to clapsticks and sing the songs of the Gumbaynggirr, an Indigenous Australian people.
Webb is an educator reviving the language spoken in and around Coffs Harbour, a coastal town around 500 kilometres (310.6 miles) north of Sydney.
The Gumbaynggirr Giingana Freedom School (GGFS) that he helped found became the first bilingual Indigenous school in Australia’s largest state, New South Wales, when it opened last year, one of many bottom-up attempts to revitalise dozens of languages that have been on the verge of extinction.
The revival of language is seen as critical by many of Australia’s Indigenous people, in what is one of the most important years for Indigenous rights in the country’s history with the upcoming Voice referendum.
Australia has one of the highest rates of language loss in the world. At the time of European colonisation in Australia, more than 250 indigenous languages – which includes around 800 dialects – were believed to have been spoken across the continent, according to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS).
But the most recent national census revealed that although over 150 languages were still spoken in 2021, only 9.5 percent of Indigenous Australians reported speaking one or more at home.
"Just listening to our children and our teachers conversing in our language - it's very special," Webb, the CEO of the Bularri Muurlay Nyanggan Aboriginal Corporation, told Reuters. "It's something that is very humbling and makes me very happy and I know that a lot of our elders feel that as well and often, often tear up and get really emotional about what's happening with their language because it's something that was stolen from them."
Combining standard western style schooling with immersive learning of Gumbaynggirr language developed in part by the local Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Cooperative, GGFS has grown from 14 students in its first year of operation to now having 52 children. Once a week the school spends a day away from the classroom, learning about connections to country and cultural practices.
Language has a fundamental role in the identity of Indigenous Australians and is often the means in which said traditional knowledge can be passed down to future generations.
As such the ‘Yes’ campaign for the national landmark referendum on whether to constitutionally recognise the country's Indigenous people, has already made language preservation one of the key issues of its advertising strategy. Australians will be asked to vote on October 14 on whether they support altering the constitution to include a "Voice to Parliament", an Indigenous committee to advise Parliament on matters affecting them.
Australia’s Indigenous, or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, are arguably the world’s oldest, with a history on the continent stretching back tens of thousands of years. But after colonisation by Great Britain in 1788, they increasingly faced discrimination, which continued long after Australia became a nation in 1901.
Australian authorities frequently relocated Indigenous people from their traditional lands and forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families through policies known as the “stolen generationâ€. Indigenous people were punished for speaking their languages as late as the 1980s.
Ray Ingrey is one of a handful of people fluent in Dharawal, the first language heard by British explorer Captain James Cook when he landed in Australia in 1770.
Ingrey, as well Webb's grandparents, were forbidden from speaking their native languages, and some relatives were threatened by the police for speaking it.
Ingrey is chair of the Gujaga Foundation, which began a Dharawal language program around 2001, built upon earlier work done by the Gujaga Child Care Centre and by using recordings made by anthropologists of elders in the 1960s.
Gujaga currently runs Dharawal language courses in about 45 schools and are aiming over the next four years to reach around 6,000 students, Ingrey said. They also offer adult classes.
Ingrey said that non-Indigenous parents are now saying that if their child is to learn a second language, they want it to be a local Indigenous one.
"We believe that sharing our language and culture with everybody enables a really good insight into the world's oldest living culture. And that can only benefit us moving forward together," Ingrey said.
The other major indigenous language in the Sydney basin, Dharug, is also making a comeback. Jasmine Seymour, an author and teacher, is part of the revitalisation of Dharug, despite there currently being no fluent speakers.
Seymour leads the language program at several primary and high schools in Western Sydney, including Lethbridge Park Public School, which began last year.
All 470 students at the school are learning Dharug, the majority of whom are non-Indigenous. Community feedback has been overwhelmingly positive according to the school’s principal Garry Sheen, who said that families of students are asking for language lessons themselves.
The New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education announced last year a broadened Aboriginal languages syllabus starting in 2024, which would mean students, whose first vernacular is Indigenous, will have new pathways to continue their language study at school.
Seymour, who is a descendent of Maria Lock - the first Indigenous person to marry a European settler, and one of the first to be admitted to a school to learn English - finds it "amazing" that this is all taking place in Sydney, the first site of British colonisation.
"To be at the other end of history where my language is being revitalised in school is completely profound, she said.
(Production: James Redmayne, Jill Gralow) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2023. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None