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I've withdrawn my recent post about the Katherine AFL Grand Final.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...

The Ngukurr Language Centre is funded again! Crazy to think really, about how this has come full circle... the first 100 or so posts on this blog were all written when I was toiling away as the linguist at the Ngukurr Language Centre. It was a difficult, but ultimately extremely rewarding job. This blog was originally started as a way for me to cope with the struggles of that job. Life in Ngukurr for me was sometimes (often?) lonely and confusing and so unique that blogging was the best way to help outsiders - and myself! - understand what I was experiencing. After three long but great years, the circle started turning. My workplace turned sour (not at Ngukurr, but at the head office). I moved back to Katherine in 2007, tired and unmotivated. My time with the organisation ended and I went on to other things (and the blog posts became rather sporadic): three semesters of teaching with Batchelor followed by PhD research and it was time to start spending more time at Ngukurr again. Bu...

Yesterday I got a phone call out of the blue from a journalist from The Australian newspaper. Initially, I felt a bit chuffed being cold-called by a big newspaper. I soon realised however that the journo was asking me about stuff that wasn’t really my area of expertise. She wanted to know about ESL teaching in the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) lands. This is out of my area – geographically (desert, South Australia) and professionally (education, ESL teaching). When I started to explain that I wasn’t going to be terribly helpful to her, she said ‘Oh. Well I just got your contact details. I don’t really know what you do”. That should have been a big enough clue to realise that there wasn’t going to be much good journalism going on. When I saw the resulting story, I learned that she didn’t do a good job of reporting on the issue at all. The story, "Language skills poor in 40pc of APY children", can be found here . It's a prime example of how not to...

Over the past 18 months I've been doing a lot of work helping Ngukurr mob to get the Ngukurr Language Centre up and running again. I won't bore you with the details but will say that I'm pleased with lots of promising developments that have happening in 18 months. I'm really hoping that the Language Centre will be in full swing again by the end of the year. (All this is thanks to the dedicated elders and language workers in Ngukurr who are committed and passionate about working on their languages). The one thing I did want to share are the flash new logos for the Ngukurr Language Centre. They are based on a painting that the Language Centre commissioned Ngukurr Arts to do. The Language Centre committee came up with the idea for the logo/painting: three specific kinds of trees. Mrs B Roberts then did a great little painting of them and then a professional graphic designer turned the painting into a set of three interchangeable logos. I was the middle-man helping make...

So when you've devoted the last 10 years of your life to working on Aboriginal languages it's easy to forget that what you do is actually quite unique in the context of wider (whiter?) society. It's what I do (nearly) every day and what I think about every day and has become completely normalised to me. I do have enough self-awareness to know that I don't lead an average life and have an interesting job but I wasn't quite ready for the responses I got last night when I talked to a couple of people about what I do. I was chatting to an acquaintance - a tertiary-educated professional who has lived in Katherine long enough - who asked me what my PhD is about. So I gave my spiel that tries to make it sound not completely obscure and esoteric. The conversation went something like this: Me: "I'm looking at two languages from Ngukurr - Kriol and a traditional language, Marra - and looking at how you talk about the same topic in both languages. Like, a lot of p...

Just thought I'd share I nice little Kriol turn-of-phrase from yesterday: Me and three of the Marra gang I work with in Ngukurr travelled to Numbulwar for the day to meet up with the old people there who speak Marra. The wet season is officially over, but on the three-hour drive to Numbulwar we were surprised to find out that there had been quite a bit of rain on the road overnight and a large section had turned to mush. My 4WD slid its way through the mud and got us to the other side but it was pretty hairy. After a few hours in Numbulwar we noticed clouds developing again (In Marra:  mala gana durn-garlindu = clouds are rising/moving) and my baba remarked: Yu luk dis kloud, im gaman-gaman nomo ba fan. Ba rein im gaman.     Look at these clouds, they're coming not for fun. For rain, they are coming. Well said,  baba . So we anxiously took off back to Ngukurr earlier than planned and fortunately the slushy part of the road had dried off a bit and th...

1.Watching for the first time video footage from Ngukurr in the 1980s of two old men speaking the Ngalakgan language to each other. I’ve never heard a conversation in Ngalakgan before. The last person I knew of who spoke Ngalakgan fluently died around 2005. 2. Watching another old video for the first time that featured one of the old Marra ladies I’ve worked with quite a few times in the past couple of years. She’s old and frail and lovely and likes to speak Marra more than English or Kriol. Watching the video of her 30 years ago, speaking only Marra for 45 minutes, made me cry. It made me mourn for a time when the Marra language and the few old people who still speak it were in a much healthier state. 3. I’m currently reading the brilliant book ‘TheTall Man’ by Chloe Hooper. It’s about Cameron Doomadgee who died of horrific internal injuries in a cell of the Palm Island police station in 2004. It’s a horrific, tragic story and very well written book. The book didn’t make me cry to...

I'm currently listening live to the Darwin hearing of the Federal Government's inquiry into Language Learning in Indigenous Communities and it's gripping stuff (for me, anyway). The NT Government spoke first this morning and swiftly issued a media release claiming ' Indigenous a clear focus of the Government '. The sentiments are noble and there are certainly some nice projects going on, but for the NT Government to claim it has "clear focus on Indigenous language" is a bit hard to swallow. Yesterday the NT Government handed down their budget and a flurry of self-promoting press releases soon followed. I searched through the 22 press releases and couldn't find a single mention of Indigenous languages. Furthermore, it's worth reiterating that anything the NT Government does for Indigenous languages is undermined by the " Compulsory Teaching in English for the First Four Hours of Each School Day " policy. Apologies and respect to...

Wow. More great stuff coming out of the national Inquiry into Language Learning in Indigenous Communities. The inquiry committee has just been to Adelaide and it must have been great. I just read through most of the transcript and particulary loved this bit where the Member for Durack (WA), Barry Haase , challenged Kaurna speaker Dr Alitya Rigney about why government funds should spent on reviving Aboriginal languages. She stood up to him very well. More than very well... Mr HAASE : ... I am trying to wrestle with your concept that the federal taxpayers should make further contribution to the teaching of the language which is—in your own words, but not the same words—almost dead, and you are now resurrecting it. I am trying to find a reason other than an emotional reason, which is important, an artistic reason, which is important, and a cultural reason for the taxpayers of Australia funding this. What is the other reason that would justify the federal government cutting funding from ...

While staying at the Language Centre on my last trip to Ngukurr, I was visited daily by Bluey. Bluey is a young buffalo that has been brought up by a family in Ngukurr who live down the road from the Language Centre. Everyday, Bluey wanders the street, eating grass. It freaks me out. It is a very big animal to be in such close proximity to, but more than that, in and around Ngukurr, buffalo are animals to be feared and avoided at all costs (unless you're killing one). So it's a bit disconcerting to all of a sudden have a friendly one around. I was working with AD at the Language Centre one afternoon when Bluey came for a visit. AD fed him a couple of gingernut biscuits and then I couldn't resist documenting the occasion on my phone: Although it was completely unplanned, I like this little recording. It's a nice example of spontaneous conversational and entertaining Kriol. Here's a transcript: Juy! Yu gu na la kemp, no daga. Najing Glenda jeya luuuuuuk!!...

I don't mention it much here, but I've been doing occasional bits of writing elsewhere on the net. Mostly, for the language blog on Crikey, Fully (sic) . (You can see my contributions here ). Last week I got a piece published by another website, New Matilda , which is quite a well-regarded independent news and analysis website. I was very pleased that New Matilda published my article. It's a reflection on Marion Scrymgour's time in politics, in particular with the role she played in canning bilingual education after a 34 year history in the NT. You can read my piece here . I was inspired to write it because ABC News in Darwin ran a story about Marion leaving politics and discussed her legacy. Except they didn't mention a thing about her introducing one of the most ridiculous policies I've ever seen - the "Compulsory Teaching In English For The First Four Hours" policy. I'm glad my article was published to counter the glossier stories that came...

I haven't posted about this much but I've been keenly keeping up with the House of Reps inquiry into Language Learning in Indigenous Communities. They're now well into the public hearings and the dates for NT have been set which I'll be very interested in. I just discovered the most recent transcript from the inquiry's public hearings which was with DEEWR - the federal department responsible for education. I found it quite riveting! Go here and it's the hearing from March 1. In particular, my jaw dropped at the bit where Dr. Amanda Day, Acting Branch Manager, National Curriculum Branch, demonstrates that she adheres to the myth that good English outcomes and bilingual education are incompatible. Clearly, she doesn't get that bilingual education can and does produce excellent outcomes for English language learning: CHAIR : All right. You mentioned in your report about the tension that exists between bilingual language learning and of course being fluent....

I'm in the middle of another quick trip to Ngukurr and this afternoon, as I had some quiet time to work on my own, it started to rain. Immediately, a relevant Marra phrase sprang to mind: Gubijiji jil-ajurlu! It is another nice little example of what a lovely language it is. While boring old English has the noun 'rain' and lazily uses that to make the verb 'to rain'/'raining', Marra is cleverer. There is the noun, gubijiji , and a special verb, jil-ajurlu , which means 'it's raining'. So if I wanted to translate gubijiji jil-ajurlu into English in a literal way, I'd end up with: Rain is raining. What a primitive language English is! :-P  The rain is lovely though...

Ever since I became addicted to Facebook 6 or 7 years ago, I've wanted to have the interface available in Kriol. (You can have it in French, Pirate, Upside Down English and Icelandic, but all the small languages like Kriol missed out). Well, now you can! A very clever fellow wrote some code that lets you translate some of the most common words and phrases on the Facebook interface into whatever language you like. So I whipped up a Kriol version and hey presto - here's what my Facebook looks like now: It's really easy and fun, and it actually does make me more inclined to write stuff in Kriol. It's available for anyone to install on their own computer and absolutely free. So, if you want to have FB in Kriol too, here's what to do: Installing Facebook in Kriol on your computer: So far this only works on computers where you can download and install a little file. It won't work on mobiles etc. 1. Make sure your Facebook account's language is set to ...

You couldn't make this stuff up. Calling the police in the NT now goes to a centralised call centre in Darwin where the people who answer the calls have zero local knowledge. Elders in Lajamanu want to contact local community police but instead get a nitwit in Darwin asking ridiculous questions. (And would the police have Aboriginal language-speaking interpreters on stand-by? Don’t think so!). Nobody outside of Darwin wants this new centralised police call centre. School starts today. Thousands of kids who speak Aboriginal languages are denied receiving an education in their own language. Attendance in remote schools is worse than ever and the Federal Government is rolling out the “No School, No Food” policy which has been shown to *not* work. The Ed. Dept is now recruiting teachers with no teaching qualifications , bringing in more outsiders who are clueless about working in remote Aboriginal Australia, even if their heart is in the right place. The Australian Human Ri...