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Women on front line of language preservation

Gail Liston | Article from:  The Australian

8 April 2009 - SPURRED on by the critical need to halt the loss of endemic indigenous languages across Australia, academics at the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education in the Northern Territory are finding themselves involved in a front-line offensive.

Of the 250 traditional languages once spoken on this continent as recently as 100 years ago, there are now only 20 to 30 considered healthy, viable and likely to survive, according to Jeanie Bell, lecturer at the institute's Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics.

She acknowledges that increased support for documenting language will come from the women and younger people in the communities; however, it is not always easy to maintain their interest.

Bell says the institute is training indigenous people to work on their own languages and help others in the communities keep them alive. "This is groundbreaking work but it takes time and commitment," she adds.

The only strong Australian Aboriginal languages left are found in the most remote and least urbanised areas of the continent, such as the Kimberley, Arnhem Land and central Australia. Some of these languages have as few as 40 to 50 fluent speakers, most of them well into middle age.

The litmus test is the Magati Ke language that has only one known fluent speaker, the elderly Palibu Patrick Nadjulu, and there is great concern that it will die with him, so the race is on to document as much of Magati Ke as possible.

Bell says most of the language revival work is initiated by Aboriginal women, who are dedicated to the cause and often become trained linguists, language workers or community researchers. These women are also language activists on behalf of their communities and regularly work with non-indigenous linguists.

A number of communities have raised concerns about non-indigenous linguists taking control of language projects and, as they see it, seeking to disempower the Aboriginal team members. Bell says curtailing discontent requires a collaborative effort to ensure the rehabilitation of languages continues and all the parties have a clear understanding of their role in the process.

"As a qualified linguist and an Aboriginal community person, I believe there must be more discussion around pertinent issues such as the control and management of language materials, intellectual property rights and the return of products back to the community," she says. "Dialogue needs to happen in a non-threatening way for either group, ultimately fostering more productive relationships."

Gail Woods, another lecturer at the institute's Alice Springs campus, finds much of her time is spent on degree courses as well

as vocational education and training courses in languages and linguistics.

"These are the courses that give Aboriginal people the skills to document their own
languages: recording, creating databases and working with linguists as active participants and assistants. We need the linguists to keep doing the work they are doing, but we also need the language speakers to have more confidence and skills to establish their own language documentation processes," she says.

Woods aims to involve young men and women who have become disenchanted with the secondary educational system. "People enjoy doing things in their own language. They like making books and resources in their own language, and little books are very easy to make these days on computers," she says. "So to have literacy skills in your language is critical."

A successful example of this practice is offered by a group of older women from Utopia, a remote community in central Australia, who requested support to document bush medicine. According to Woods, they wanted to create opportunities for old and young to "record stories and write them down".

In response, lecturers and youth media trainers have been drawing on existing strengths in oral language, elders' traditional knowledge and visual art practices to establish a community-driven documentation process.

Bell is optimistic that creative young Aborigines with IT skills will help to arrest the decline of indigenous languages. "We have to be honest about the problems (they
face) and do everything we can to help them," she says.

Source: The Australian

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