Lou Bennett Speaks Her Mind

Yorta Yorta/Dja Dja Wurrung songwoman Lou Bennett shares some insights behind local Indigenous place names.

The home page of Murray River Tourism website describes Echuca Moama’s ‘inspirational natural vistas that will awaken the senses and stimulate the spirit’.

It doesn’t mention that the word ‘Moama’ translates as ‘place of the dead’ in the local Yorta Yorta language.

Where tourists see wineries, water sports and houseboats, Yorta Yorta think: traditional burial ground.

Discovering the meaning behind a single word can reveal a lot about Indigenous history and culture. Down the road from Moama, the town of ‘Kialla’ is the Yorta Yorta word for the Goulburn River – but it’s also the word for ‘father.’

“It’s interesting that these two words have a connection. When you put these ideas together, it gets me thinking – that’s why they use that word,” muses Lou Bennett.

Yorta Yorta/Dja Dja Wurrung songwoman Lou Bennett is passionate about reviving endangered Indigenous languages. “When I speak in my language it tastes like honey, it feels good. It’s an innate thing.”

http://www.blackarmband.com.au/ and she spent ten years with the much-loved folk group,

“Indigenous languages – where have they all gone?” she wonders. “Thousands of years of language wiped out in less than 300 years. It’s horrifying.”

Lou explains that many Yorta Yorta words simply can’t be translated into English.

“We have a dozen words for sister and the type of sister: maternal, paternal, sister in law, younger sister, older sister… yet for happy, sweet, honest, loyal, beautiful, good – we have one word: galnya.”

It is revealing that there is no distinction between ‘truth’ and ‘beauty’ in the Yorta Yorta language and that a single word like ‘sister’ could never encapsulate the complex roles and kin relationships in many Indigenous communities.

As part of the ABC Open pilot project, ‘Mother Tongue’, Lou will be working with Open Producer Suzi Taylor over the coming months to produce more stories about the Yorta Yorta language.