that munanga linguist

The other day a discussion topic came through via email about 'supporting community researchers in the field'. The discussion topic was introduced as: The ways that linguists work with communities is starting to change. The idea of doing research on or in a community is shifting to doing research with the community. The movement towards community-based and participatory fieldwork models in Linguistics mirrors shifts in other disciplines such as health research. Okay, I know the above was just a quick way to introduce the topic but it tapped into a bigger issue and I felt the need to write the following... *steps up on to soapbox*  Disclaimer: I'm not criticising the many of us who do linguistic fieldwork and try our best (often with great success) to increase local involvement, exchange skills and knowledge and so on. Nor am I criticising the organisations who do deliver great training and do great community-based work. Nor am I implying that this is a redundant ...

Half of Australia, including me, was stuck in a mega-heatwave last week. It was really hot. Like, really hot. I just kept thinking that it's global warming, it's the way of the future and that we're bringing this upon ourselves. But I also kept thinking of all the ways we can use less energy and carbon. I know our individual contributions will barely make a difference, but you gotta start somewhere. Here's what I came up with (I already try to do lots of these, but of course lapse very easily): - Waste less food. - Drink tap water. - Turn more lights off. - Use a little car instead of a big car. - Use a scooter instead of a car. - Use a bike instead of a powered vehicle. - Walk. - Travel in groups more. - Use public transport more. - Travel less. - Go on holidays to nearby destinations. (Domestic travel FTW!) - Use the aircon less. - Don't turn the aircon down too low - Drive with the windows down instead of with aircon on. - Turn appliances and devi...

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'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...

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 b...

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...

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...