Speaking Gamilaraay

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Sydney University students – your chance to study an Indigenous Australian language this semester! KOCR2605 – Speaking Gamilaraay 1 – University of Sydney Gamilaraay is an Indigenous Australian language from the mid-northwest of NSW that is currently undergoing revitalisation. This unit of study will provide students with a basic competence in speaking, understanding, reading and … Read more

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Literacy isn’t just literacy in English

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On Ockham’s Razor (24/1/2010) a psychologist, Margot Prior, talks about the need to do something about Indigenous children’s literacy. There’s some good stuff in it – the need for more Indigenous teachers, for partnerships between schools and communities, for teachers to be sensitive to the differences between non-standard English and Standard English (note that this is NOT limited to Indigenous children – there are plenty of other children in Australia who don’t speak Standard English as a home language).
Prior’s overall solution?

If preschool education at a minimum of 15 hours per week was universally available, and every child had at least a year of programs which focused on enhancing language and pre-literacy skills, provided by committed preschool teachers, many more children would begin school well prepared for reading and writing.

I expect politicians will welcome this solution. Why should we treat it with caution?
First, for Prior “language” = “English”. But her talk shows some basic misunderstandings of languages and how children learn languages and reading and writing. The distinction between speaking a traditional language and speaking a non-standard variety of English are treated as if they presented the same difficulties for children attempting to learn standard English. They present rather different challenges – the methods of teaching English as a second language have to be different from those of teaching English as a second dialect.
As worrying are remarks such as the following:

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Boa Sr

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Boa Sr was apparently the last speaker of the Great Andamanese language Bo (or Aka-Bo, described as extinct in the Ethnologue). According to Survival International there were around 5000 Great Andamanese in 1858 , when the British invaded the Andaman Islands. Now there are around 50 – killings, diseases and forcible resettlement having caused the … Read more

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Give us more numbers

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Check out Nicolas Rothwell’s article in Saturday’s Australian. It’s about yes well maybe after all it wasn’t such a good idea the way the Intervention demoralised Indigenous people and engendered a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of Government and its bureaucrats. So, which newspaper has hammered Indigenous people for incompetence and dysfunctionality over the last 4 years? Which newspaper has been applauding itself for triggering the Intervention?
And thinking of other misusable data, the My School Site was launched recently, showing how students across Australia performed on the NAPLAN tests of English literacy and numeracy.
I’m all for numbers, but I do share Bruce Petty’s concern about how these are being used. The numbers we’ve been given are seriously flawed for understanding what’s happening in Indigenous schools in the NT.
These are ENGLISH literacy tests administered in ENGLISH. So if the kids start monolingual in a language other than English it’s kinda obvious that they’re going to do badly in reading and writing English in their first years at school. And they’ll continue to do badly if they don’t get good ESL teaching and if they get so bored at school that they stop attending.
Lots of the remote NT schools (bilingual and non-bilingual) do really badly. What is unforgiveable is the comparison with so-called “statistically similar” schools. They do not seem to have factored in first language. So, among the schools compared to Yuendumu (majority of children speak Warlpiri as a first language) are schools where most children’s first language is English, Aboriginal English or an English-based creole. Here are some (there are probably more but I don’t know all the communities).
Borroloola School, Borroloola NT 0854
Camooweal State School, Camooweal QLD 4828
Goodooga Central School, Goodooga NSW 2831
Moree East Public School, Moree NSW 2400
Wilcannia Central School, Wilcannia NSW 2836
Even if you speak an English-based creole rather than standard English, you’ll still do better than a child who only speaks a traditional language – just as English-speaking children find it easier to learn French than Chinese. There are so many similar words.
Who could be surprised that these children do better on English tests?
And, the information one really wants isn’t there on the site. You can get mission statement blah. So the Feds have said they’ll give more information – what parents think about schools…. Brilliant, what blame-avoiding PR person thought that up?
I bet parents would be MORE interested in the following sets of numbers, which the State and Federal Departments could provide MUCH more cheaply than by conducting an expensive survey of parents:

  • How much do the State and Federal governments spend per child in the school?
  • how many students per teacher?(see a nice opinion piece (1/2/2010) in the Sydney Morning Herald)
  • how many first year out teachers are there in the school?
  • what’s the teacher churn in the school?
  • in schools with high numbers of children who don’t speak English, how many properly trained ESL teachers are there? (and I don’t mean ESL training via a day’s workshop with a department trainer)
  • how long has the principal been there>

Throw those into the statistical blender and see how that changes the “statistically similar schools” clumping.
Apparently the Federal Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, wants us to use the My School website to ‘hold schools and teachers to account’. Give us the numbers ON THAT SITE so we can hold Governments to account.
On the other hand, take the much maligned bilingual education programs. Last year the NT government demoralised communities with bilingual education programs by unilaterally abolishing those programs, against the communities’ wishes. All in the name of improving NAPLAN scores.

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True stories

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Australia Day, ah. Sizzling like a sausage, I read Junga Yimi (true stories), the Warlpiri magazine started in 1978, and restarted in 1994. This issue is a wonderful words-and-pictures round-up of what’s been happening at Yuendumu – in Warlpiri and English, translations by Ormay Gallagher, and lay-out and editing by Donovan Jampijinpa Rice.
There’s news of the very young (Kurdu Kurdu Kurlangu childcare centre), of old (Mampu Maninja-kurlangu Jarlu Patu-ku old people’s program), of people generally – the winners of the Alice Pest Control Tidy House competition (Serena Shannon, newsletter editor Donovan Rice and their family), and the Little Sisters of Jesus. Of work – more Warlpiri are working at the Tanami Gold Mine, news of the Warlukurlangu Artists and of the Yuendumu Mining Company (including the current prices for native plant seeds – $680 for a full drum of Wardarrka (Acacia ligulata)). Lots of news of school-age children and young adults, from what Jaru Pirrjirdi (Strong voices/words/language..) and Mount Theo are up to – ranging from swimming carnivals, homework centre, life guard training, night club and youth programs – to what’s happening at the school – classes, culture nights and country visits.
There’s news from the Warlpiri branch of PAW Media – the Yapa Beats compilation CD, a radio program Yapa patu wangkami, (oral history docco in Warlpiri and English about life at Yuendumu before settlement, during the settling and during the NT Emergency Response aka the Intervention). And finally …football! Flying South when the Yuendumu Magpies AFL team travelled to Melbourne to play at the MCG against the Anangu All Stars from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands and Maralinga Tjarutja Lands. [I can’t resist mention here of a favourite recent successful ARC grant — Mark Dras, Myfany Turpin et al.s’ project Natural Language Generation for Aboriginal Languages – they hope to “generate a simplified version of reports on AFL matches” – in Indigenous languages….]
Junga yimi gives a lively picture of life at Yuendumu (check out also Yasmine Musharbash‘s equally lively ethnography Yuendumu everyday). Good things are happening, people are doing good things.
But, very sadly, this issue starts with an obituary (by Lizzie Ross Napurrurla) for J. Nungarrayi Egan, a passionate advocate and worker for Warlpiri people and Warlpiri language. Nungarrayi was there at the start of the bilingual education program, and worked there most of her life before retiring to help set up Jaru Pirrjirdi for young adults. She fought for the continuation of bilingual education, up until the end when she wrote a letter [quoted here] to Marion Scrymgour, protesting the “First four hours of English” decision. She could foresee what the decision would mean for Warlpiri children, Warlpiri communities and Warlpiri language. It dooms much of her life’s work.

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Crowd-sourcing translations in disaster areas

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You’re in a disaster area and you want to get information urgently to the right people. But you only speak your own language. That’s what’s happening in Haiti. So, a simple solution – text your message through to an emergency number. On receipt, there’s crowd-sourcing: “100s of Kreyol-speaking volunteers translate, categorize and plot the geocoords … Read more

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Bringing injustice out into the open

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Next week, Mr Tom Calma steps down as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner. Calma is “an Aboriginal elder from the Kungarakan tribal group and a member of the Iwaidja tribal group”, both in the Northern Territory.
Calma came to the position with experience in many aspects of Indigenous life, from education to housing to public administration, as well as overseas. He has held office in a turbulent time for Indigenous people- turbulence caused on the one hand the recognition that many Indigenous people and communities are still suffering appallingly, and on the other by attempts to place the blame for this suffering on Indigenous people, traditions and languages, and on non-Indigenous do-gooders and their focus on human rights. Despite this, he has held firmly to the responsibility of his office of “keeping government accountable to national and international human rights standards”. The Apology to the Stolen Generation he sees as the great symbolic triumph of the period, but he sees also continuing injustice.
Yesterday he delivered his final Social Justice Report 2009 and Native Title Report 2009, in the Redfern Community Centre, in Sydney, along with a community report, and a stirring speech. His speech and community report summarise in plain languages his three main concerns in 2009, while the major report provides supporting references and case studies.
He sees his three main concerns as interlinked.

  • getting at the causes for why so many Indigenous people are in gaol by investing in communities rather than gaols,
  • supporting Indigenous languages
  • supporting the rights of Indigenous people to live in outstations and homeland centres by showing the benefits of living in well-run communities compared with the well documented problems of fringe camps and housing estates in urban centres

His plea for Indigenous languages is plangent, and grounded in his long experience in Indigenous education. Here’s a quotation from his speech.

The Australian Government has made some effort to support our languages by introducing Australia’s first national policy exclusively focused on protecting and promoting Indigenous languages – Indigenous Languages – A National Approach 2009. While this policy provides a starting point to preserving and revitalising our invaluable languages, it will not be enough on its own. State and Territory governments have to come on board.

They have responsibility for school education and they need to make sure that their policies support our languages. If they don’t take action soon, Indigenous languages will be extinct within the next few generations. I urge you – if you are able – to do whatever you can to bring this injustice out into the open. The parents of the school children who are losing bilingual education are very distressed – many of them have contacted my office. They are doing everything they can to preserve the bilingual programs but their pleas are falling on deaf ears.

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Call for submissions- National Indigenous Education Action Plan

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I’ve been galvanised [ thanks Jason!] out of deep gloom over what’s happening and not happening in the education of Indigenous children in Australia. There IS something we can do.. We can all make submissions to the National Indigenous Education Action Plan draft put up for public comment. OK they may go “Sigh…another submission from a linguist….” But they do say they’re going to publish the submissions. Deadline 28 February.
So here’s roughly what I’m saying to them:

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