that munanga linguist

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...