Language Revival a Healthy Path to Indigenous Survival

In decades past police were known to knock on the doors of Aboriginal mothers in Sydney’s La Perouse, threatening to lock them up if they kept teaching their language to children.

One woman was warned and from then on she never spoke it again.

The Dharawal language, which once echoed from Sydney Harbour to the Illawarra, almost died out in this way, squashed from use and forced into the edges of indigenous society.

What the traditional Gweagal elders never dared to hope was that they would one day hear the sounds of their own language from the mouths of their youngest children, in a childcare centre no less.

“We were always told that language and country go together,” chairman of the Dharawal Language Program Raymond Ingrey told The Australian.

“When you talk about spirituality in the Aboriginal sense, it is a connection to each other, the ­environment, country, the birds.

“We are only one link in the chain that has been going since time began. We needed to make sure that chain was not broken.”

The community at La Perouse, with the help of the NSW government, has built a resource of words and phrases in the Dharawal language.

Community members have been trained in Certificate I and II courses and a K-6 syllabus is being developed.

Children are greeted with “Naggangbi” — “how are you?” — and farewelled with “Nandawabi” — “see you in the future” — each day.

“Sydney is in the Western world and for our community’s survival we have to engage,” Mr Ingrey said.

“But why not have both our worlds side-by-side?”

General manager of the Gujaga Children’s Service in La Perouse Shannon Williams said language loss fed into other social traumas; poor education, isolation, suicide.

In one Canadian study of indigenous people, researchers ­observed a direct link between speaking their native tongue and reduction in suicide rates among their youth.

In British Columbia, those who reported less than half of a cohort with conversational knowledge of their language had suicide rates six times higher than those where a majority had language skills.

The NSW government has a more systematic approach to preserving indigenous languages around the state with five hubs serving as a base to protect, teach and spread native languages.

“If you’d asked the elders 10 years ago they would have said there would be no hope in two or three generations there would be any Aboriginal language left,” NSW Aboriginal Affairs Minister Leslie Williams said.

“Whereas now they’re hearing it in schools. The elders see this ­direction will provide opportunities and it is just so important to them. They are so proud.”