that munanga linguist

Now that wet season has happenend (sort of) there's lots of little fruits growing around the place. This one is a kind of black plum, or in Marra: gulinja , or in Rembarrnga: wujal . Tastes good.

At the moment, I’m feeling very uncertain about the future. Worst case scenario for our funding is a disastrous one where Ngukurr Language Centre wont be able to have a linguist working there and it’ll basically close, like it did for two years a few years back. Best case scenario is that there’s nothing to worry about and that we’ll keep going the same way, but even still, we can never be sure from one year to the next what’s going to happen. When it comes round to funding application time, these things weigh on my mind… what if there is no funding. What do this mob do then? What do I do then? What has been the value of the past couple of years if it’s just going to fall over again? It’s not a good way to work, always with the knowledge that it could all be over soon. How are you supposed to achieve anything in terms of community development when things can only develop ‘subject-to-funding’. It’s a big reason a lot of Ngukurr residents grow tired of hearing about the latest sc...

Last year I blogged about giving some of the language workers here spelling tests. Well, I’ve continued doing some work with two of the language workers trying to explicitly teach them about writing down their language, Rembarrnga (which doesn’t have a completely straightforward spelling system). I made them a big syllable chart and have been giving them tests on writing down just syllables. Then I’ve been giving the spelling tests, writing down some simple words. It’s pretty amazing. Really, these two are still at a pretty low level, but they’re learning. They’re thinking about breaking words down into syllables now. And they seem to actually enjoy doing the work. But the coolest thing is that yesterday after giving them a syllable spelling test and a word spelling test, they sat there and kept practising on other words and even sentences. For instance, my mami R, she wanted to write down this sentence: Re-ngœnœ nga-nguna (I’m going to eat my meat, which sounds better in Kri...

Anybody seen that movie 'School of Rock'? ... where Jack Black's character is talking about sticking it to 'the man' and talking about 'the man' being any kind of oppressive force - being a specific person or just a general force. Well 'the man' beat me hands down today and it's getting me down. 'The man' came at me from a few sides too, which makes it even harder. I shouldn't really go into details for fear of getting too bitchy but just wanted to say that I don't feel so great right now. I just want to learn, work with, teach, record, transcribe, write down, speak, listen to the endangered languages here and the people that speak them. But it's just not that straight forward. It never is I suppose. Bobala mi. In other news, I got an anonymous Valentine's Day card today, which is quite funny.

I haven’t written about this on my blog before because I didn’t know where to start and I still don’t really feel like going into details. But at the end of last year, two days before I left Ngukurr for my Christmas break, there was a tragic and hugely significant death here. The entire community was, and still is, in shock and disbelief about it. The man that died was an old song man, a very important culture man and someone that everyone looked to for anything to do with ceremony and culture. He was also a completely unassuming man, always happy and smiling and never caused trouble for anybody. He was a cute little oldman too, which really belied his knowledge and strength and importance. And he died in a tragic way before his time. It’s awful. Anyway, today, after two months, his body came back to the community. I joined the procession towards the end and it was really moving, really sad, but there was also something really matter-of-fact about the ceremonial aspects to the pr...

Today was an extraordinary day – but in a strange way: it was extraordinary in that it was a completely ordinary day, but it was quite manic and exhausting for me. There are some things about this job that I just can’t get used to and still fight against or stress about which only succeeds in tiring me out. One thing that I just can’t deal with, without getting cranky or stressed, is the way that some people I work with will just interrupt me when I’m already talking to somebody/ doing something and ask me something or ask me to do something else. Sometimes it’s just ludicrous! The short-tempered voice inside my head just wants to say ‘Can’t you see I’m already talking to someone!!’ The other thing I’m still struggling with is that coming from my worldview it sometimes looks like the mob I work with spend most of the day doing not very much and don’t seem to want to do very much. It conflicts so badly with the endless list of jobs I have running through my head and my determinatio...

Here’s some more reflexive writing a la my anthropology university courses… Sunday afternoon and I’ve had a pleasant day pottering around home on my own, cleaning, doing washing, whatever I like… doing my own things in my own time in my own space – times that I treasure here at Ngukurr. Then a guy that I sorta know and 5 other people arrive (2 I also sorta know) asking to buy and burn some CDs. I do this occasionally for people – sell them blank CDs and help them burn them. Anyways, that was cool – I said yeah, they stood on the doorstep hesitating, I told them to come in. I helped them out and asked if somebody could learn to burn them and then go on and do it. That was all cool. It all was all cool really. They burned CDs and were here for about 20-30mins. But I realised that even this seemingly simple exchange stressed me out. After they left I realised that I’d tensed up and was breathing shallower and needed to relax and take some deep breaths. I’m trying to work out why ...

'Coming back home to Ngukurr' is a line from a song by Ngukurr's most famous band called 'Yugul Band'. And yes, I'm back in Ngukurr. And it's fine. I've been away for a couple of months, in which time I've been working in Katherine and spending time in my house there, had Christmas and New Years in Brisbane with my parents and friends, got smacked in the head and had an operation. Lovely. I got flown back in to Ngukurr because the rivers are up and the roads impassable. That trip had it's fair share of trials including humbug and a pilot forgetting to pick me up from a remote airstrip. Nice stressful way to start my next stint here at Ngukurr. My first morning I walked around saying hello to lots of people I hadn't seen since I'd left and it was lovely. Everyone was happy to see me back and lots of them had heard about my 'incident' and were concerned. It actually made me a bit emotional, getting a sense of how much people ...