Today on ABC Radio National there were two broadcasts of interest to TLC readers:
Lingua Franca had Patrick McConvell talking about the need for a National Indigenous Languages policy, (MP3 here, transcript here). It’s a clear summary of the perilous state of Australian Indigenous languages and of the way present government policy is imperilling them further. He reinforces the points made by Inge Kral and David Wilkins that the best evidence on how children learn goes against the NT Government’s move to dismantle bilingual education. Relevant to this are the material and links on the Ngapartji Ngapartji website.
And Life & Times rebroadcast a documentary, On the Shore of a Strange Land – the Story of David Unaipon, a Ngarrindjeri/Yaraldi man who recorded his people’s stories and aspects of their daily lives. It was originally aired on Hindsight. MP3 here. A remarkable man. The documentary includes reminiscences by people who knew him
Some of Unaipon’s work was published in pamphlets in his life, but the bulk was ripped off by William Ramsay Smith and published under Ramsay Smith’s name. Unaipon’s manuscript has since been edited and published: Legendary tales of the Australian aborigines , edited by Stephen Muecke and Adam Shoemaker (Carlton, Vic. : Miegunyah Press at Melbourne University Press, 2001)
For further information:
- Philip Jones’ short biography (Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 12, Melbourne University Press, 1990, pp 303-305).
- MaryAnne Gale’s PhD thesis, Poor bugger whitefella got no dreaming : the representation & appropriation of published Dreaming narratives with special reference to David Unaipon’s writings (University of Adelaide, 2000)
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