that munanga linguist

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...

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. 

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...