More Funding Needed to Preserve Indigenous Languages

Language specialists battling to save endangered languages in the Pilbara have welcomed a $54m boost in Federal Government funding, announced earlier this month.

The Federal funding aims to encourage the use of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Indigenous languages by boosting community resources and visual arts programs across the country.

Senior linguist at the Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre in Port Hedland, Jessica Mathie, said the funding was urgently needed.

“All our work is critically under resourced,” Ms Mathie said.

“If you think about staffing, at Wangka Maya, we cover an area that contains 31 languages but we only have three linguists and a [small] number of Aboriginal language workers at any one time.

“Extra money will mean that less projects will be rejected.”

Despite local Aboriginal people having some of the world’s oldest living cultures, the Federal funding comes at a time when many Pilbara Indigenous languages face the prospect of dying out.

“There are a lot of people in the Pilbara who still retain a very strong sense of language and culture, they have amazing knowledge, which is why we are here working with them,” Ms Mathie said.

“But I also can’t stress how urgent it is to act to save other local languages.

“If you think about a language like Nyiyaparli [traditionally spoken in the area around Newman], there are probably only 30 people speaking it and most of them are elderly.”

Ms Mathie said Wangka Maya had recently released a picture dictionary containing 50 Nyiyaparli words but that the language remained endangered as long as it was not being passed onto children.

“The only safe language is one that is commonly spoken by all children in the community and used in all contexts,” Ms Mathie said.

“Once a language stops being spoken to children when they are young, they stop acquiring it and they stop being able to use it in all contexts, so its use gets really reduced.

“In the case of Nyiyaparli, unless we do something now, that knowledge will pass away with the old people and once that happens there is absolutely no way to resurrect that knowledge.”