'Coming back home to Ngukurr'

'Coming back home to Ngukurr' is a line from a song by Ngukurr's most famous band called 'Yugul Band'. And yes, I'm back in Ngukurr.

And it's fine. I've been away for a couple of months, in which time I've been working in Katherine and spending time in my house there, had Christmas and New Years in Brisbane with my parents and friends, got smacked in the head and had an operation. Lovely.

I got flown back in to Ngukurr because the rivers are up and the roads impassable. That trip had it's fair share of trials including humbug and a pilot forgetting to pick me up from a remote airstrip. Nice stressful way to start my next stint here at Ngukurr.

My first morning I walked around saying hello to lots of people I hadn't seen since I'd left and it was lovely. Everyone was happy to see me back and lots of them had heard about my 'incident' and were concerned. It actually made me a bit emotional, getting a sense of how much people care about me here, even though it's never actually expressed and will soon be forgotten after a few weeks of work, stress and humbug.

But I have to stop being so pre-meditative about my job being stressful. It doesn't have to be that way! (Slappling myself and telling myself to 'come on').

Even though I'm reluctant to admit it, I do see myself being here for most or all of the year, funding and sanity permitting. I'll try and keep yumob posted on my adventures.

Jaldu na,
Wamut.

Comments

The Oscar-winning Coda and its (mis)representation of interpreting (or, why I almost walked out of the cinema)

Ok so I'm a linguist not a movie critic but I am an avid movie-goer - part of the generation of Australians raised by Margaret and David to appreciate cinema and think critically about it. (I've even reviewed a few things on this blog: Short-doco Queen of the Desert , short film Lärr and some discussion of the brilliant Croker Island Exodus here ). At this years Oscars, the film Coda surprised many by taking out Best Picture. It seems like few people have even had a chance to see it. Here in little ol' Katherine, we have a brilliant film society at our local Katherine 3 cinema, where each fortnight we get to watch something a bit different. In late 2021, I had the chance to see Coda there, long before it was thought of as an Oscar contender. Now that Coda is being talked about more than ever before, I wanted to share my experience of watching the film - especially because in one scene in particular, I was so angry that I genuinely considered walking out of the cinema -...

Luk mowa >>

Stirring quotes from Aboriginal educators

Today I've been working on my submission for the Federal Government's Inquiry into Language Learning in Indigenous Communities. As part of my research for my submission, I was searching for quotes from Aboriginal educators in support of bilingual education and Indigenous language education. When I assembled the quotes, I found it pretty much heartbreaking to see the passion that is there when at the same time Indigenous language education is being denied because of the NT Government's ridiculous Compulsory Teaching in English for the First Four Hours policy. Here's what I found today: What we want is both-way teaching in the school – not only for two hours a week but everyday there should be both-way teaching… That policy of speaking English only at the school is the wrong thing – it is not good for our children … they will forget their language - Rembarrnga speaker Miliwanga Sandy (Beswick Community) (in Gosford 2009). I am a qualified bilingual teache...

Luk mowa >>

The pitiful state of Recommendation 11.6 of the NT Fracking (Pepper) Inquiry

Today the NT Government announced that it's ok to start fracking the Beetaloo Basin, claiming that all 135 recommendations from the 2018 Pepper Inquiry report have been met and, therefore, fracking can proceed. Most of the recommendations - and you can go through them all here: Action items | Hydraulic Fracturing in the Northern Territory - are outside my field of expertise as a linguist. There's a lot of regulatory stuff, things about the mining industry, stuff about land and water management that others know much more about than me. However, as a linguist working in the Katherine Region for 20 years, there is one recommendation that sits in my wheelhouse so, after today's announcement, I wanted to take a look at it. It's Recommendation 11.6, which says: That in collaboration with the Government, Land Councils and AAPA, an independent, third-party designs and implements an information program to ensure that reliable, accessible, trusted and accurate information...

Luk mowa >>

that munanga linguist

Search This Blog