that munanga linguist

This week I got rather excited upon hearing that the ABC is trialling an Indigenous language news service in two NT languages: Warlpiri and Yolŋu Matha. It's such a great initiative and got a bit of attention when it started, which made me think that it'd be nice to offer a beginner's guide to the languages and a closer look at what reports in the languages actually look like, as I guess most people who heard about the service know little about the languages involved. It's also slightly unfortunate that despite the launch of the Indigenous language news service getting some great attention some of the communications failed to make a distinction between separate Indigenous languages, e.g.: ABC tweet with Warlpiri newsreader Vaughan Hargraves Jampijinpa This is a minor problem in that it may perpetuate common misconceptions that Indigenous languages are just closely related dialects. Some people still think there's only one Indigenous language. So I thought ...

Today is Territory Day and while I am a proud Territorian in many ways, it's a challenging place and there is lots going on here that I don't particular like or value. Any long-term readers of my blog will probably notice that I've become increasingly jaded over the years and am now thoroughly disillusioned with many things that happen in the NT, like the Government's poor record of  education delivery in remote communities and the increasing push for mining development that undermines environmental concerns and Aboriginal relationships to country. My list of gripes is pretty endless. A constant on that list is the neglectful treatment of Aboriginal languages and failure of so many to value the amazing linguistic diversity found in the Northern Territory, which has been diminishing unabated for decades now. Official language policy in the NT fits nicely within what gets described as a 'Laissez-faire policy' where Aboriginal languages aren't explicitly d...

I think I have a different definition of what 'inertia' means than most people. It seems like most people use it to mean 'do nothing' as in 'be inert', whereas I understand it to mean to continue going along the same path unabated, and if it so happens that nothing was happening originally, then nothing will keep happening. So, I might say, (1) 'I switched the telly over to Wimbledon and my inertia led me to sit on the couch all night watching the tennis'. And that seems to fit both definitions. But if I say: (2) 'the inertia behind Abbott's campaign to scrap the Carbon Tax ensured it became an eventuality' Then I think most people would understand (2) as 'Abbott did nothing about the scrapping the Carbon Tax and so the Carbon Tax continued to exist', whereas I could easily read it as 'there was so much momentum behind repealing the Carbon Tax that it got repealed anyway, despite it becoming an increasingly unpopular m...

This morning in the line at the bank in Katherine: Teller serving Aboriginal customer who was ordering a new card. Teller spoke to her loudly and abruptly. Customer didn't sound like English was her first language. Part of the exchange went something like this: Customer: "It's a debit card?". Teller "Yes. It's a debit card. What colour do you want?" "What?" "What colour do you want? You can have black, blue or pink." "Oh. ahhh... black?" "Ok, black." "Oh, no it's a debit card. Blue." "It's too late now. I can't go back. It's black now." and so on... No friendliness. Didn't seem to go out of her way to be helpful or provide extra service. Tellers next two customers were white. Teller appears to know them and was friendly, chatty, laughing and helpful. While there could easily be more to the story, based only on what I saw, the inconsistency in the service this tel...

I just had a small talk conversation with a stranger that went something like this: Me: I'm a linguist and I work on Aboriginal languages. Them: Oh cool, what languages do you speak? Me: Well I know bits of all the languages around here (i.e. Ngukurr) but Kriol is my strongest language apart from English. Them: But do you know other languages too? Me: Oh well yeah I know a bit of German and I was an exchange student in Iceland so I learned Icelandic a long time ago... Notice that when I tell them I know Aboriginal languages, it doesn't satisfy or fully answer their question? They want to know more: what other languages do you know , as in what real languages do you know . I've had this conversation many times. Enough to recognise it as a clear sign that Aboriginal languages aren't seen as equal to foreign languages. This subtle devaluing is revealed in other ways too, such as when Average-Jos refer to Aboriginal languages as 'dialects' in casual conversa...

I didn’t speak our lingo. We weren’t allowed at school. The white men got the idea we were abusing them. They couldn’t understand us, so they said you have to speak English, son. I find it better to communicate in English now. But to put both languages together would have been much better. I still feel that way, a strong feeling wishing to speak my lingo, my own language.   My father was from the Wulngarri clan and my mother was from across the river. What my father want[ed] to see was for me to get a better education, from the whiteman. I don’t think he thought about teaching me the lingo. When he started to get old, he started saying he wished us youngfellas had learned our language. He wanted us to learn both ways – the whitefella way and the blackfella way.   When I came back to Ngukurr, the only language was my mother’s. Straight after 1968 I came back. I was around 14 years old. You lose your identity if you lose your language. Your identity is connected to...

Old Kevin Rogers at Ngukurr is lovely, clever, skinny old man. (Not OLD-old, but old enough for me to call him in 'old man' in that Aboriginal term-of-respect type way). If a Munanga visited Ngukurr today, they might easily overlook him and probably never realise that he is a university graduate and former principal of Ngukurr School. An article of his, 'Blekbala Kaltja at Ngukurr Community School', was published in 1991 in a volume called "Aboriginal Pedagogy: Aboriginal teachers speak out". It contains this great quote: Some Munanga working in Aboriginal Education have a one-sided view of curriculum. They feel that Munanga knowledge taught and structured in a Munanga way is more important than Blekbala knowledge. They undervalue Blekbala knowledge and when training Blekbala teachers they try to force them to have a Munanga pedagogy. They understand very little about Blekbala Kaltja and their attitudes of superiority make them oppressors of our culture ...