that munanga linguist

"Ai bin gulijap krai" means 'I nearly cried'. Here at Ngukurr, middle aged and older people all have stories about being banned from speaking Language at school. I don't hear the stories that often, but I know they're there. I don't push them because I worry they might be painful or make people feel no good. But in the press release I sent around a few weeks ago, we approached the issue. Here's what I wrote (it was published in the Koori Mail): Once banned, Elders now teach children language "Older generations of Aboriginal people in the southern Arnhem Land community of Ngukurr were banned from speaking their traditional languages at school when they were children. Decades later, a dedicated group of the same people are putting their languages - now endangered - back into the classroom and teaching new generations. Now in its second year in its current form, the language program at Ngukurr Community Education Centre incorportates five langaug...

Believe it or not, but this motley crew is responsible for the revitalisation of Ngukurr's endangered languages. And they're deadly. Standing left to right are my mami (mother) R, baby M, and my wawa (brother) A, who are the Rembarrnga mob. Then there's my maari (mother's mother's brother) T, our Waagilak teacher, then me, then my nephew D, who works on Ngandi and my magarra (uncle's daughter) B, a Marra teacher. Sitting down are my anggul (uncle) E, our Ngandi teacher, my anti F, a Marra teacher, and JBJ, our chairperson. Thank you to my mami Sophie for the photo.

I'm too vain to not be excited by being mentioned in any kind of media... and I'm doing okay at the moment. You can see me on two blogs: bulanjdjan talking about the opening of the Community Language Library last night, and the other bulandjan talking about me dancing (performing more like) and the big disco at Ngukurr last weekend. Apart from that, I was interviewed by ABC radio and the opening of the Language Library last night. I just went to air around the NT and might be on Radio National too now. And a press release I sent around about the Ngukurr School Language Program has got a response. The April 26 edition of the Koori Mail has a colour photo on page 2 and the story on page 28. But my name isn't mentioned on that one... so I can be a bit humble. :-)

Last week, someone new joined in with teaching our language program – but this time it’s someone young! And not only that, he’s really good and seems to be enjoying it so far. He’s only about 20 and helps old E teach Ngandi. Ngandi is really endangered so D, the young guy (my nephew), doesn’t really know the language but he has good brains and is picking it up really quick and running with it. Best of all, he is pretty outgoing and a naturally good teacher. Pretty exciting really. But what was surprising to me was finding out how different it is to be working with someone young, someone who I can relate to a bit more. I didn’t think it would have such a noticeable effect. It felt really good to be working with someone who naturally understands me a bit better (and I don’t mean in terms of language, I mean in terms of interests, attitudes, values etc.). But then I started feeling a bit sad, because I realised how I am always working hard to understand and relate to the older peo...

I slept very badly last night, even though I was very tired. I thought I would collapse into bed and go straight to sleep, but instead laid there watching telly until I got sleepy at 11pm. But that’s not the end of my story. Sometime later, my mobile phone woke me up. I thought someone was sending me a text message. I woke up and looked at my phone but there was no text message and no missed call. It had definitely made a noise because the phone was lit up too. But whatever noise my phone was making was totally unexplained. It was just after midnight. I fell back into sleep easily but woke up a couple of hours later and couldn’t go back to sleep. I sat there awake for a while, getting eaten by mozzies. Eventually, I sat up and reached for the fan switch to turn it up. At the exact moment I turned the fan up, the touch lamp on the other side of the room went on. In two years, this touch lamp has never turned on for no reason. So this afternoon, I told this story to my two ...

Hello to anybody still looking at this blog. I'm still here at Ngukurr. I just haven't felt like writing much lately and haven't had anything I wanted to get off my chest and on to my blog. I suppose the longer I'm here the more ensconsed I am in life here and the more normal life here becomes for me. But yes, I'm still here and not going anywhere. Literally. The roads out of here have been cut for a couple of months now. Luckily, I got to fly out of here a month ago for a week or so, but since coming back I haven't been able to leave. Which is fine, but it's now four weeks which is about my limit before going a bit stir crazy and spending too much time fantasising about being able to go to a cafe and pay someone to make me a nice coffee. Don't ever take those things for granted! I'm hoping to be able to drive to Katherine in a week or two, but there's another stinkin cyclone hanging around which might have plans of thwart.

Since last week, I've been noticing that I've been becoming more and more proud of the language mob here at Ngukurr and that my love for them has been growing. And today was a bit of a pinnacle, with two politicians coming to visit us here at Language Centre. Not that anyone did anything special today while they were visiting, but just that they're here doing what they do makes me proud. The main reason I've been feeling this way lately is because I've been having a lot of problems with the main office in Katherine - rock bottom staff morale and poor management. In the face of those problems I've been really grateful for this mob here and the support they give me and the consistent good work we do together. But it's funny. Their support isn't revealed through sitting down and talking about things and them telling me everything's okay and I'm alright. It comes through them just being them, being happy to keep working with me, an implicit expr...