that munanga linguist

No, not Priscilla. The real one. Starlady. ABC2 last night screened a terrific 30min doco about  Starlady  - a hairdressing, youth worker phenom doing great work in desert communities. If you missed the program then lucky for you the director has posted it on Vimeo :  http://vimeo.com/50807152 . Starlady in Areyonga. Source: ABC Not only was it a wonderful and interesting story, it provided a few genuine gems of wisdom. Starlady demonstrates how to deliver training and youth programs that are popular and engaging to young people in remote communities; a feat that many programs, including government school education delivery, often fails to accomplish. What is particularly special about this story is that the wisdom and positive example is being set by someone who has been discriminated against and would be seen as an outcast by many. Yet Starlady has a lot to teach munanga (non-Indigenous people). Some of the same people who would undoubtedly dispar...

A blogpost I wrote years ago about how to pronounce "Ngukurr" still gets hits now and then. Mostly from people who type "Nooka" into a search engine, not realising that the place is actually spelled "Ngukurr" and certainly not realising that there might be another, more authentic, way to say it. One of the gathering-dust-on-the-shelf jobs came to fruition the other day when I raced around Ngukurr with my iPhone interviewing a few community members on how to say "Ngukurr" properly. I edited it together into a nice little video that I'm really quite pleased with, especially considering I hardly ever work with video: And for those interested, here's a transcript. Translations are provided in brackets. The language is Kriol, except for Barry who uses Ritharrŋu as well as Kriol. BW: My name Benjamin Wilfred (My name is Benjamin Wilfred) RJ: Mi Rebecca, mi wek iya la ofis (I'm Rebecca, I work here at the office) BB: Ŋarraya ...

I've withdrawn my recent post about the Katherine AFL Grand Final. In writing the post, it wasn't my intention to offend anyone or inflame tensions. It seems apparent that my post did so I apologise.

On the weekend, Katherine's regional AFL competition reached its peak with the A Grade grand final between the Katherine Camels and the Ngukurr Bulldogs. The Camels are a predominantly non-Indigenous team from town (Katherine). The Bulldogs are 100% Indigenous, from a remote community four hours drive east of Katherine. These differences shouldn't be worth noting but the game was dramatic and the post-match analyses on what happened bring up differing opinions depending on who you talk to. The grand final is a big deal. About 200 Bulldogs supporters had made the trip from Ngukurr into Katherine to cheer on their team. They were a diverse bunch: kids, teenagers, adults and community leaders/elders. They are the children, parents, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews and grandparents of the men on the team and they were rapt watching their relatives take to the field. Non-Indigenous football clubs have a different raison d'être  to community sides. For teams like the Cam...

I've done quite a few posts here about the national inquiry into Indigenous languages that's been going on for about a year. See here and here , for example. I'm very excited to say that the final report came out today and it's really good. I was very lucky to receive a preview copy of it last Friday because of my association with the language blog on Crikey . It was a media embargoed copy of the report and I wasn't allowed to disclose its contents until it became public today. (I'm so ready for CSI: Ngukurr... ha!). But getting the preview copy allowed me to write up a piece for Crikey which can be found here (thanks go to Claire, Aidan and others from Fully (sic) and Crikey eds for making my piece much better than it was going to be). It's been an exciting day. Personally, I was pleased to see my article published on Crikey and that it seems to be pretty well received and read. But that's just my own little smugness. Generally, I'm really ex...

My PhD research concentrates on Marra and Kriol - Marra an endangered traditional language and Kriol, a creole language that has usurped it along with many other languages in this part of the world. Personally, I find both languages fascinating. The idea that Kriol is somehow inferior or should be viewed upon negatively doesn't wash with me. Although I do recognise that Marra has more prestige for many. Kriol is amazingly interesting, dynamic and complex and I've learned that it has a richer vocabulary than any other linguist has previously described. At the same time, I love learning Marra and working with the last few old ladies who speak it. We've spent hours and hours making and listening to recordings and transcribing and translating them and I've loved pretty much every minute of it. When translating recordings with the old ladies, I'm often amazed at how neatly Marra translates into Kriol most of time. Some of the Kriol translations are so compatible with...

It's always exciting when an election turns out an unexpected result. In this weekend's NT election, the CLP have taken power again after winning as many as four bush seats off Labor. It was remote Aboriginal people who dictated the final result. I think that's a first. (I'm hoping that it means politicians will now do more than just pay them lip service which has happened far too often in the past). (Photo source: ABC) I find it interesting that the media commentary is talking up the big remote swing towards CLP. If you look a bit more closely, the reality is that bush polling just swung all over the place, usually in the direction of those with more local ties. For example, the booth in Lajamanu went to the First Nations candidate Maurie Japarta Ryan who is from Kalkarindji (100km up the road). Maningrida went to Greens who put up a local candidate. They also put the Labor and CLP candidates third and fourth and chose not to give their votes to Tiwi Islanders...