Efforts to save dying Aboriginal languages

LORRAINE Injie smiles as she remembers the rich patchwork of Aboriginal languages used during her childhood in Australia’s remote Pilbara region.

“In my community, it was common to speak 10 languages. Speaking three wasn’t that impressive,” she says.

However, use of native tongues has declined at an alarming rate, from hundreds 200 years ago – the time of European settlement – to 20.

“It was forbidden to use our own languages, they have disappeared. It is very upsetting,” says Injie, 48, who is part of a programme training teachers to pass the dying languages on to schoolchildren.

Six times a year she flies thousands of kilometres to Sydney University’s Koori Centre, where she joins three other indigenous women studying for a master of indigenous languages education.

Injie knows Banyjima and Yinhawangka, which she spoke as a child with her parents.

At the end of the 18th century, about 250 distinct languages were spoken, along with 500 to 600 dialects. But the policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families to assimilate with white Australians, creating the “Stolen Generations”, devastated native languages in the last century.

In many cases, children were barred from speaking their mother tongue at school or in Christian missions. “Sometimes Aboriginal parents also thought that their language would hold their kids back, so they wouldn’t use it,” said Michael Walsh, a professor and expert on indigenous languages .

Sydney University’s Koori Centre is at the forefront of efforts to reverse the tide, along with initiatives like Waabiny Time, a national indigenous TV programme with simple language lessons for children.

In New South Wales, 5000 children learn an Aboriginal language at school, while there are similar courses in South Australia and Victoria.

There are even examples where a language thought to have completely disappeared has been revived, like Kaurna, in South Australia.

“The last time it was spoken daily was in the 1860s,” estimates Robert Amery, a linguist at Adelaide University.

Working from a few old documents, the community, along with indigenous language experts, has found a renewed interest in its language. Now it is used in ceremonies and political speeches, and the Kaurna people are creating new expressions adapted to modern society.

However, the recent recognition of indigenous languages has had a major impact.

“Schools which offer Aboriginal languages programmes are recognising and valuing those languages and cultures,” says Susan Poetsch, who trains Aboriginal teachers at Sydney University.

“This increases the esteem and pride of Aboriginal pupils, and it has a positive impact on their attendance and participation in school.”

But other experts are less optimistic. In the Northern Territory, the only place where bilingual schools exist, a change has occurred recently. From now on, these schools will begin each day in English.

“In some remote Aboriginal schools, kids may not attend for much more than four hours, so making the first four hours only in English effectively prevents a bilingual programme from operating,” says Koori Centre linguist John Hobson.

“If they only hear and speak an Aboriginal language at home and only English at school, they are unlikely to acquire either successfully.”

He added that while Aboriginal languages were still spoken fluently in some parts of northern and western Australia, that was far from the case in urban areas.

“The initiatives we currently have in schools are good.

“But if the aim is to produce fluent speakers who speak an Aboriginal language in their daily lives, it is not enough,” Hobson warns.

“We need regional, state-wide and national plans.

“There are huge advantages to developing bilingualism in kids. But Australia is obsessively monolingual.” — Sapa-AFP