Learn An Ancient Tongue, Says Linguist

Australians have diverse ethnic backgrounds and between them speak an array of languages, but Michael Christie believes we should look closer to home and learn an Aboriginal tongue.

Professor Christie, who was named the Northern Territory’s Australian of the Year, wants more Australians to consider such a move as they celebrate Australia Day this year.

“It’s part of the rich history of our country,” he told AAP.

“If you study the language you start to learn about kinship and about land ownership and about ceremonial history, which actually teaches you something more general about Aboriginal societies.

“Learning the culture would help us reflect on the narrowness of some of our own Western European culture.”

A fluent speaker of Yolngu languages, Professor Christie has been nominated for Australian of the Year for his award winning work in bringing Aboriginal and non-indigenous knowledge systems together in the fields of adult education, school curriculums, medical interpretation and remote housing.

He said all Australian children should be given the opportunity to learn an Aboriginal language at school, in addition to the foreign language classes on offer.

Originally from New Zealand, the Charles Darwin University indigenous language expert began working as a school teacher on a small island off the coast of Arnhem Land in the early 1970s when former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam introduced bilingual education in schools.

“It worked really well and now we see a huge dislocation between schools and the community, which we can see in the terrible attendance rates that have gotten even worse since the end of bilingual education.”

The NT government in 2008 announced that the first four hours of schooling in all communities would be delivered in English.

The changes continue to face enormous criticism.

Today, in some remote Aboriginal communities school attendance averages just 30 per cent.

“The use of Aboriginal language in schools brings Aboriginal parents and grandparents into the school and so brings the community and the school together,” Prof Christie said.

He said it was important for Aboriginal children to start learning English when they reach the age of 11 or 12 to enable them to contribute to the Australian workforce later in life.

“But I think it’s even more important that little Aboriginal kids grow up knowing who they are and knowing their language and their land and their family before they get hammered by a foreign language and foreign teachers in a foreign classroom setting,” Prof Christie said.

The many Aboriginal languages used by the 250 or so Aboriginal nations in Australia were some of the oldest in the world, he said.

“It’s a terrible tragedy that most of the Australian languages are dead and will never be spoken again and yet we don’t seem to be terribly worried about how we ensure the vitality and the ongoing viability of the languages we still do have.”

He said the national standardisation of education was one of the many things putting pressure on Aboriginal languages and causing panic among educational authorities.

“They will be required to teach more and more to the test, rather than developing educational practices which are relevant to that community.

“We seem to have lost the ability to tie our education into what’s relevant in the here and now.”