Recognition for the Revitalisation of Culture Through Language

Recognition for the Revitalisation of Culture through Language

CYI Opinion, Edition 2 – 17 September 2013

“language is central to the practice and continuation of culture in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Preserving indigenous languages … ensures that culture, concepts and values remain part of Australia forever.” 

Former Federal Arts Minister Tony Burke

The success of CYI’s collaboration with the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy (CYAAA) to develop materials to support teaching language received important recognition when CYAAA’s Culture domain was awarded Queensland’s Premier’s Reconciliation Award on 11 July 2013. This award is provided for the most outstanding and innovative outcomes towards advancing reconciliation in Queensland. In accepting the award, Lillian Bowen, a local teacher who works at the Hope Vale school teaching  the Indigenous language of Guugu Yimidhirr as part of the Culture program, forcefully explained the importance of language teaching to keeping culture alive and to passing it on to future generations.

Despite the accolades for the innovative language work that has been conducted, it remains a challenge to get the support that is needed to continue this critically important language teaching work. The Australian political and policy landscape is a hostile one when it comes to efforts to save and revitalise Indigenous languages. Governments of all descriptions share the aspiration of maintaining, revitalising and reviving Indigenous languages—but such aspirations have not translated into effective policies and strategies to turn the aspiration into reality.

During our reform work in Cape York Peninsula we have been acutely aware that education of our children is the most important key to the future, and that ancestral languages wherever possible must play a central role. Our work differs from previous approaches. We have focused on the production of lesson books to be used in the schools to support the application of Direct Instruction (DI) teaching methods to language teaching. Unlike many of the previous bilingual education approaches of the past, there is a strict delineation maintained within CYAAA schools between Indigenous language teaching and mainstream literacy and numeracy.

Language teaching is one part of CYAAA’s root and branch reform of the schools under the Cape York Welfare Reforms. CYAAA has implemented an innovative 4 C’s program delivered over an extended school day:

1. Class: teaches mainstream curriculum in English literacy and numeracy using DI methods.
2. Club: provides artistic, musical and sport programs.
3. Culture: provides comprehensive Indigenous culture and language programs delivered by teachers and local cultural tutors.
4. Community: provides case management of each student’s attendance, school readiness, health, nutrition, wellbeing and parent engagement, working closely with the Family Responsibilities Commission.

The pioneering application of DI to teach ancestral languages in CYAAA schools has perhaps been most successful in Hope Vale, where it has focused on the revitalisation of Guugu Yimidhirr. Like so many of Australia’s Indigenous languages, Guugu Yimidhirr is at a critical point in terms of its long term survival. Indigenous languages can fall into two categories:

1. Some languages are dead and there are insufficient records of them at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) for them to ever be properly revived.
2. Other languages such as Yolngu Matha are vibrant, and continue to live because there are enough speakers.

Guugu Yimidhirr is on the borderline, and determining which way it will go is likely to depend entirely on the next few years. Guugu Yimidhirr is semi-recorded. There is an enormous amount of information and oral stories that have not been written down. Many of the best speakers are now elderly. The kids who arrive at the CYAAA school in Hope Vale generally do not speak or write Guugu Yimidhirr.

If Guugu Yimidhirr isn’t supported now, it may well become a dead, half-known language in the AIATSIS archive. On the other hand, if it is supported now and children start to speak, it could become a full living language of Australia, because there is still enough information remembered by the best speakers to salvage the living spoken language with all its semantic details.

Language teaching in the CYAAA primary schools in Aurukun, Coen and Hope Vale is still in its early days but is creating a great deal of excitement for good reason. In this country we have struggled to find ways to effectively teach ‘both worlds’ education for Indigenous kids, our approach to language teaching provides important insights that can lead us to develop language policies and strategies.

I believe, it is through the work of those such as Lillian Bowen, that we can turn the aspirational words of government, into a lived reality for Indigenous young people, their families and their communities.

Click here to see local Hope Vale teacher Lillian Bowen teaching language in the classroom.