that munanga linguist

I've withdrawn my recent post about the Katherine AFL Grand Final.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