that munanga linguist

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...

Hi everyone! So I'm in Canberra at the moment trying to be a studious linguist and get this PhD done. I have my mid-term review coming up where I'll be giving a seminar about words you use in Marra and Kriol to talk about family (kinterms). Can I just say, unequivocally, that Marra people have an amazingly complex way of talking about their family. I mean, I'm not surprised by this as Marra people, like all Aboriginal people, place so much importance on family and maintaining family relationships. But still, I'm slightly blown away by the kin terminology Marra people use. To demonstrate this, I'll try and explain how Marra people would talk about people who in English, we'd call mum or aunty : So, if I was speaking Marra and wanted to call out to my mum or talk about my mum, I'd use the word gajirri . I'd also use this word if I was calling out to or talking about any of my mum's younger sisters. If I was calling out to or talking about my mum...