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Roper Kriol video trilogy

I've just finished a little trilogy of videos on Roper Kriol - more specifically on a few words in Roper Kriol that don't come from English. I really like these little videos, although I'm a total novice at video editing (please offers suggestions on how to improve them next time!). Each one describes three words that all Kriol speakers in Ngukurr know, but English speakers wouldn't recognise at all. The two guys on the videos, Kamahl and Dwayne, are just brilliant. They were great at describing and acting out these words and it was all done totally spur-of-the-moment. The poor quality is because I recorded them quickly on my iPhone but luckily Dwayne was using my ZoomH2 digital recorder so at least the sound quality is pretty good. And the words themselves I find really interesting (more on that below). I hope you enjoy the vids: Here's part 1, featuring the words moi , gubarl and ngum : Part 2 features the words ngarra , waranga and dinggal-dinggal :

I see the blood on the leaves

I'm reading about so many foul and disgusting things that white people did to Aboriginal people when they first arrived in the Northern Territory. It's kinda unbearable and makes it starkly clear that white Australia has blood on their hands. And the names that come up in the history books! The one I'm most surprised at is former Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer 's grandfather, Sir John Downer , who was premier of South Australia and a lawyer (and has a suburb in Canberra named after him). John Downer "played an active role" when "successive South Australian governments masterminded, condoned, or concealed the violent dispossession and oppression of Aboriginal peoples in the Northern Territory to 1910" ( Roberts 2009 : 22). And don't be fooled - the violence and atrocities that white people carried out on the frontier is not something buried. It's in government reports, newspapers, memoirs and diaries, letters of officials, the r

The bizarre story of the 1887 Proclamation of the Township of Urapunga

I’m reasonably familiar with Urapunga, though not many Australians – nor even Territorians - are. It’s a little community of 80 or so people about half an hour’s drive from Ngukurr. It’s nestled between the two big river crossings – the Wilton and the Roper. I used to go there once or twice a week in 2006 and 2007 to help Hannah and Hazel run Ngalakgan classes at the local school. It’s a great little tight-knit community, built, as many remote communities are, on the site of a former pastoral station.  Opening of Urapunga store in 2010 (Source: Fred Hollows Foundation) A few years ago, I was wasting time on Google Maps, looking at Ngukurr and surrounds, curious to see how well they’ve mapped probably one of the most isolated-but-populated areas on the globe. And I found something rather weird when I scanned over the map of Roper Bar crossing. There were these faint gridlines superimposed on the map that made it look like a neat little town was about to be build on the banks

NT Election wrap-up: Darwin-Palmerston gaps grows, no-one understands Lingiari and the CLP swing is over.

As Tony Abbott moves into the top job, I've had a look over what happened in the NT for the 2013 Federal election. There haven't been any major changes - (Natasha Griggs looks to have held her seat in Solomon as has Warren Snowdon in Lingiari. Nigel Scullion is again our CLP senator and Labor still won the other senate seat) - but looking a bit more closely at the results shows a few interesting things: Solomon Natasha Griggs has apparently been returned, after a very tight battle with Labor's Luke Gosling. She survived about a 1% swing against her and currently leads by only 800 or so votes. (ABC still has the seat in the "in doubt" category though). Looking at how individual booths voted, the northern suburbs of Darwin generally swung towards Luke and he won quite a few booths there with a clear margin. Down in Palmerston, most or all of the booths there swung towards Natasha. So while the final result is much the same, underlying this is a widening gap betw

Indigenous languages in the election

I know everyone's sick of the election but don't worry - this little post is more about language than the 'leckshun. I wrote a post on Fully (sic) last week about how hardly any election candidates use languages other than English and that this makes election time duller than it should be. When it comes to Aboriginal candidates there are at least three in the NT who speak an Aboriginal language fluently and aren't afraid to do so publicly. It's pretty cool that at least for us in the NT, it's not English-English-English for the whole election campaign. The first is Rosalie Kunoth-Monks who's a Senate candidate for the Australian First Nation's party. From Utopia, she used to be the mayor of the Barkly Shire and was the star of Australia’s first colour feature film, Jedda, Rosalie didn’t learn English until she started school. Her first language(s) are Arrernte and Alyawarr . Normally, running for a small party like First Nation's would me

Do your bit for journalism in Australia and pay for your news

I'm a big fan of ABC's Media Watch. When Jonathan Holmes had his final episode last month, he talked passionately about how so much of Australia's news is now free and that it's affecting the quality of journalism in Australia. He urged: "Whatever your politics, or your preferences, and even if you've never bought a newspaper, start subscribing to at least one media website: whether it's the Herald Sun or New Matilda, Crikey or the Sydney Morning Herald, old media or new, pay just a little to keep real journalism alive." Well his argument persuaded me and I finally got around to doing something about it. I just forked out $70 for a concession subscription to the independent news website New Matilda and feel warm and fuzzy inside. New Matilda doesn't dangle carrots to get you to subscribe but that's okay. I have all the carrots I need. And I definitely wasn't going to give my cash to the waste of space that is the NT News or the colo

PhD Update

Just drafted another chapter. 22 weeks of scholarship left. Feels like 18 chapters to go. Wanna go home. Hate everyone. Hate everything. 72,000 words written. Still know nothing. 129 works cited. Still know nothing. Marra language still dying out. Kriol. Marra. Kriol. Marra. Knowledgemaintenancelossindicateindicateshiftdemonstrateindicatedemonstrateindicate. I see the blood on the leaves. I see the blood on the leaves. I see the blood on the leaves. Mustn't listen to manic Kanye West songs. Mustn't listen to sad Nina Simone songs. That about sums it up. Now back to the grind... *written on the #3 bus en route to Uni. 

Walking With Spirits festival... at last!

The Walking With Spirits festival has been running for about as long as I've been in the Katherine Region. It makes no sense that I'd never been before. I know the guys who run it and occasionally do bits of work for their organisation , I know dozens of people who've gone and plenty who've performed and worked on it too. This year, I stopped being a lazy bum and checked it out for myself and fortunately enough got to do so for free as a volunteer. It was a pretty awesome event. Unfortunately with my volunteering duties I didn't get to the venue, Melkjulumbu (aka Beswick Falls) until dusk. It's an absolutely breathtaking place and it would've been nice to be a regular patron and spend the afternoon soaking up the location. The festival location at dusk. Photo: ABC The festival consists mainly of one massive show, featuring a range of performers who vary pretty wildly in levels of experience, who they are, what they do and where they're from. Ins

Today's trivia! Or, will anyone care about my PhD research?

Somehow I dug myself out of a mini PhD-writing slump this week and finally tabulated the last results of some research I did at Ngukurr a couple of months ago where I interviewed 14 young Kriol speakers about bush medicine and also a bit about lizards. The people I interviewed taught me lots of interesting stuff, but analysing what they told me is doing my head in. I've basically been writing about the same stuff for six months and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of my thesis in general. I mean, I'm still *kind of* interested in what I'm doing and learning but I'm at the stage where I've flogged the topics I'm focusing on to death so much so that I barely care anymore and I just can't see how anyone else might care. (Yes, I'm at *that* stage. It's known as the Valley Of Shit ). What I will look like if I have to write about lizards for much longer But here's your chance to restore some faith that what I'm devoting all my time to mig

ALNF update: my panic attack wasn't for nothing

I recently wrote a detailed post that was critical of the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation 's use of a statistic that falsely claimed that 80% of Indigenous kids in remote communities can't read. It was a post that had been festering in my mind for six months and I was so relieved to finally get my gripes off my chest. But writing that blogpost was just the start. Initially, I wasn't confident about publishing it on Fully (sic) but after running it by a few people I decided to publish a version there too, knowing it would get a lot more readers and attention. So it went up on Crikey and I immediately noticed it getting read, Facebooked and tweeted, including by reasonably well-known people like Helen Razer and economist Rory Robertson . I got some good feedback - in particular I was totally chuffed to get a personal email from one of the country's top Indigenous academics thanking me for the piece(!) - but I got a few negative comments too. The attention

Good-but-weird Beswick Kriol

I'm not too far away from finishing my PhD (I hope!) and my plan for afterwards is to come back to Katherine and see what comes my way. I'm pretty confident that I'll find interesting work that utilises my skills and experience like the other day when I was asked to help Djilpin Arts with a Kriol translation of a picture book they're creating. It was only a little job, but very interesting for me because I had to translate it into Beswick Kriol, rather than Roper Kriol which I'm much more familiar with. There was a surprising number of little adjustments I had to make to ensure the translation sounded okay to a Beswick audience and Evangeline at Djilpin Arts was invaluable in providing assistance. There were a few things I already knew to avoid - for instance, Beswick mob say idim  instead of dagat for 'eat', they say deya  instead of ja  for 'there' and my favourite - they say eberrijing  instead of enijing  for 'things/belongings '

Deceit for a cause (or, why the ALNF irks me Pt.1)

Here's a shocking statistic: It's courtesy of the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, or ALNF, a Sydney-based charity that promotes literacy development among under-privileged groups, in particular Aboriginal people in remote Australia. To garner support for their cause, the ALNF has fantastic marketing and PR, with a seemingly endless line of celebrities who ' raise their hands ' and successfully appeal to concerned public to part with their cash and fund their programs. Statistics like the one above are a great hook. They appeal to the guilt that many non-Indigenous people feel about Indigenous disadvantage and it gives them a way to feel like they are part of the "solution" without have to leave their urban locales. Here's another example from a couple of years back of just how impressive (and lucrative) their strategy - and that statistic - can be: Someone like me who's worked in remote communities for years and is passion

Complementary worlds in the Art Gallery of New South Wales

While many of my PhD days down south are lonely days , I did have an opportunity to spend a wonderful 24 hours in Sydney last week. The occasion was to visit one of my dearest oldest friends who now lives in New York but was on a rare visit to Australia. I jumped at the opportunity to catch up with her and booked myself on to the Murray's Canberra-Sydney express. (Which by the way, I love dearly, if only for the wonderfully ambiguous pre-recorded post-boarding message that says "We thank you for travelling with Murries/Murray's"). Aside from a great and soul-rejuvenating catch-up with the lovely Ms. Iacovella (continuing a friendship that goes back to being 20 and working at World4Kids Aspley), we spent a few hours wandering through the Art Gallery of New South Wales. One of our common interests is art - she's worked for various galleries for years and I've spent years in Ngukurr where many great artists come from, many of whom I've done language work w

lonely days

At the moment, all I'm doing with my time is trying to get this PhD thesis written. About 60,000 words down, about 40,000 to go. I've pretty much eliminated all other tasks from my agenda so my to-do-list basically looks like: Write thesis This can lead to some pretty lonely days. Like today. Basically I got up. I went to my office. I pored over data, I wrote a few hundred words, I procrastinated with some emailing and internet surfing. I ate lunch at my computer and by the time I left at the end of the day, I'd barely had contact with any other humans.  It kinda sucks. But I just want to finish the damn thing. Sigh. But I probably shouldn't write a completely dreary blogpost. So here's a neat video I saw today in Murrinh-Patha (the language of Wadeye) and English with a guy tricking people into thinking he's eating dogfood. :-)

Baba ba im. And a bidiyo.

I just noticed how odd this string of syllables looks: ... baba ba im, im ...  But it's not odd at all. It's a perfect little string of Kriol words that means: ... his/her sibling is ...  And who said Kriol words were hard to pronounce? In other Kriol language learning news, the first of three Roper Kriol verbs videos is done and up on the Ngukurr Language Centre YouTube page . I mentioned on a previous post that while at Ngukurr recently, an audio recording session with two of the young guys who've been a great help to me with my Kriol research turned into an impromptu video recording session with them demonstrating some of the substrate verbs that are common in Roper Kriol. The first video shows three of the verbs: moi , gubarl and ngum . Kamahl's acting is suberb! You might notice the camera wobbling noticeably when he's scavenging ( gubarl ) cigarette butts. That's me trying not to laugh too much! Hope you like the vid. Parts 2 and 3 will be done so