Endangered Languages and Cultures

National Indigenous Languages Policy for Australia

5 February 201122 July 2009 by Jane Simpson

Good news! There’s interest at federal ministerial level in a National Indigenous Languages Policy for Australia. [thanks Ngapartji and Sarah!] Apparently the person to contact is John Prior (Electorate Officer for Senator Trish Crossin, Northern Territory). He is researching a National Indigenous Languages Policy for Minister Garrett’s office. He welcomes comment as well as pointers … Read more

Make a joyful noise

5 February 201118 July 2009 by Jane Simpson

Buffet style linguistic eating was available in Melbourne last week – first the Annual Conference of the Australian Linguistics Society, and then the Conference of the International Pragmatics Association’s annual conference. Galactic conference fees put IPRA out of many people’s reach (earlybird rego 350 Euros), but ALS still sticks to the cost recovery principle and makes sure the costs are low. Thanks to the La Trobe University organisers!
Australian Indigenous languages featured heavily at ALS: fieldwork, a whole session on the language Murriny Patha, papers on historical linguistics, word order and information structure… and the future of linguistic work at AIATSIS, and information about projects happening there. On non-Indigenous stuff, there was a brilliantly argued plenary by Anne Cutler (MPI and MARCS) on native listening – she has a book in progress which will be a must-read. I almost regretted not having followed a psycholinguistics path.
And there were good outcomes from the ALS AGM:

The Society is continuing to support Pacific Linguistics, about the only place that continues to publish books on languages of our region that are properly copy-edited and don’t command galactic prices. (Disclaimer: I’m on the board)
The Society is expressing its concern about the decision to close down bilingual education in the Northern Territory
The Society’s journal AJL is going to appear more often, and is now ISI indexed which means
- better awareness of the work published therein
- more people will want to publish in it
- probably more work on Australian languages will be published, and will become better known

The first plenary at IPRA was also on Australian languages – Peter Sutton’s musings on how Australian Indigenous people’s beliefs and practices about languages have been altered by the move to settlement life, and how this leads to them speaking English, a creole or a lingua franca instead of their traditional language.
Sutton’s book, The Politics of Suffering was launched, and has been much discussed in the news. Gotta read it, because I bet the arguments are more subtle than their portrayal in the media. Another book has hit the streets and the media too — Nick Evans’ Dying Words: Endangered languages and what they have to tell us. Oh to have time to read them! Class preparation..sigh. Nick’s book has attracted a long and luscious piece from Nicolas Rothwell (The rest is silence (18/7/09). He mentions Nick’s joy in learning from speakers of other languages, but the piece exudes the melancholy of a healthy man at the burial of a distant acquaintance.

World Oral Literature Project

5 February 20119 July 2009 by admin

The website of a new project called World Oral Literature Project: Voices of Vanishing Worlds has just gone live at the University of Cambridge. The project kicked off early this year under the leadership of Mark Turin, an anthropological linguist whose major research area is Nepal (his PhD thesis was a grammar of Thangmi, a … Read more

3L Summer School final report

5 February 20119 July 2009 by admin

The two-week 3L Summer School continued last week with plenary lectures on documentation and linguistic theory, language policy, language archiving, and documentation and language typology. Courses in the second week included Amazonian languages, Caucasian languages, Grammar writing, and documenting special vocabulary, together with the continuation of documenting sign languages, and sociolinguistics of language endangerment. The … Read more

What to do with research outputs: an excellent example – Jeremy Hammond

5 February 20117 July 2009 by Jane Simpson

[from Jeremy Hammond] As linguists and anthropologists working on small and often endangered languages, we should consider distributing the materials that we accumulate over time. Obviously institutions such as PARADISEC provide a repository for the data, and this is an important role for the safeguarding of raw materials for long-term forward compatibility. But we also … Read more

Doing the best by Indigenous children in remote communities

5 February 20112 July 2009 by Jane Simpson

Last Friday was AIATSIS’s Research Symposium on Bilingual Education, organised by Sarah Cutfield and Cressida Fforde. At the end, Mick Dodson launched a paper by Pat McConvell, Jo Caffery and me, which is now available online Gaps in Australia’s Indigenous Language Policy: Dismantling bilingual education in the Northern Territory [ new link – .pdf]. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Discussion Paper 24.
Friends of Bilingual Learning have put out a media release on the subject, and resolutions from the symposium are expected soon, both long-term and short-term.
I was saddened to learn of the helplessness and isolation of the people who’ve been working with mother tongue medium programs. Many are Indigenous; many non-Indigenous staff have worked in these remote communities for decades. They’re stayers. They get very little support. Policy-makers don’t listen to them; they’re treated as problems because they can see the importance of starting from where the children are at. They came in their holidays, some got funding from NGOs. It was humbling to hear that the symposium was valuable to them.
What came out strongly from the Indigenous participants in the symposium was the sentiment behind some of the paper titles: They are our children, This is our community (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma), and Nganimpa-nyangu kurdu-kurdu, nganimpa-nyangu Warlpiri Our children, our Warlpiri (language) (Warlpiri community members and Wendy Baarda). Yes we love our children, yes we want the best for them, yes we think they can learn both ways and live in both worlds. It is movingly expressed by Connie Nungarrayi Walit, a Warlpiri health worker:

The one thing we have left from our parents and grandparents which is really our own is our language, Warlpiri. This is the last thing we have left to pass on to our children and grandchildren,

The people who have decided that English shall be the language of the classroom will have taken that language away from Nungarrayi’s grandchildren. Unintentionally, with the best will in the world, thinking they’re doing the Right Thing by Nungarrayi’s grandchildren.

3L summer school mid-term report

5 February 20111 July 2009 by admin

Well, we have just passed the half-way point of the 3L Summer School and things seem to be going pretty much according to plan. Despite some last minute scrambles (presenters dropping out and needing to be replaced, equipment needing to be bought, rooms being taken out of service) all the classes got organised on time and have run well so far. Even Blackboard, the e-learning support environment, is functioning faultlessly, enabling us to do away with photocopying handouts and having useless piles of paper at the end of each class.
There are 97 students attending the 3L summer school, representing 42 nationalities (Argentinian, Australian, Belgian, Benin, Brazilian, British, Cameroonian, Canadian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Ethiopian, Finnish, French, German, Ghanaian, Greek, Indian, Indonesian, Irish, Israeli, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Malian, Mexican, Nigerian, Norwegian, Pakistani, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Saami, South African, Spainish, Swedish, Swiss, Taiwanese, Ugandan, USA). There are 18 instructors, who come from the three consortium universities (SOAS, Lyon and Leiden), along with colleagues from University College London. Three tutors from SOAS and a group of student volunteers, plus our Administrator Alison Kelly, make up the rest of the 3L team.

Bilingual education symposium – program

5 February 201125 June 2009 by Jane Simpson

AIATSIS’s Research Symposium on Bilingual Education is gathering pace. The program’s now available. Audio recordings are expected to be available in a week’s time.
Friday 26th June
8.30 – 9.00 Registration in the National Museum Foyer
9.00 – 9.30 Welcome to Country by Matilda House.
Introduction by Dr Lisa Strelein, Acting Principal, AIATSIS.
9.30 – 10:10 Mr Tom Calma (Australian Human Rights Commission)
They are Our Children, This is Our Community
10:10 – 10:30 Morning Tea
10:30 – 11:15 Dr Jane Simpson (University of Sydney), Dr Patrick McConvell (ANU) & Dr Josephine Caffery (ACU)
Gaps in Australia’s Indigenous Language Policy: Dismantling bilingual education in the Northern Territory
11:15 – 11:40 Leonard Freedman, Peggy Gallagher and Daphne Puntjina (Areyonga School)
Areyonga Two-Way School: What we do and why we do it
11:40 – 12:05 Rarriwuy Marika, Marrkiyawuy Ganambar-Stubbs (Yirrkala CEC), and graduates from the Yirrkala School Two-Way program
Dharktja Dhuwala Djambulu Maypa: My language has layers and layers of meaning.
12:05 – 12:30 Janet (Maxine) Nungarrayi Spencer, Connie Nungarrayi Walit & Wendy Baarda (Yuendumu community)
Nganimpa-nyangu kurdu-kurdu, nganimpa-nyangu Warlpiri Our children, our Warlpiri (language)
12:30 – 1:30 LUNCH
1:30-2:10 Ass. Prof. Brian Devlin (CDU)
Bilingual Education in the NT and the continuing debate over its effectiveness and value
2:10-2:50 Kathy McMahon (CDU) and Cathy McGinness (St John’s College)
Tales from the North: Bilingual pedagogy and sustainability
2:50-3:30 Prof. Joe Lo Bianco (University of Melbourne)
What Happened to Language Rights?
3:30-4:00 Afternoon Tea
4:00-5:15 Discussion Panel. Chair: Dr. Peter Toyne
Panelists: community members associated with NT Two-Way Schools; Prof. Joe Lo Bianco; Dr Inge Kral; Professor Lester-Irabinna Rigney; Dr Jane Simpson
5:30 – 7.00 Reception at AIATSIS
Launch by Prof. Mick Dodson of:
J. Simpson, P. McConvell & J. Caffery 2009: Gaps in Australia’s Indigenous Language Policy: Dismantling bilingual education in the Northern Territory (AIATSIS Research Discussion Paper 24 – see here)

New publications from SOAS and FEL

5 February 201118 June 2009 by admin

Two new groups of publications are now available from SOAS. 1. LDD 6 Volume 6 of Language Documentation and Description is now available. This volume is a fully-refereed collection of papers dealing with: language documentation methodology sociolinguistics and pedagogy for endangered languages software applications The papers were written specially written for the volume, and include … Read more

News from the WA Language Centre Conference – Sally Dixon

5 February 201116 June 2009 by Jane Simpson

[from Sally Dixon]
I was privileged to attend the WA Language Centres conference in Perth last week. Delegates from 5 regional language centres and several language programs spent three days swapping stories at the wonderful Kaditj internet café and conference facility, and probably could have talked for at least another week.
We were warmly welcomed by Noongar elders Dorothy Winmar and Gloria Nora Dann, and Justina Smith who shared her beautiful blend of contemporary and traditional Noongar dance. The progress of the Noongar language program has been breathtaking. Since presenting their very first book at the last conference only two years ago, the team (in partnership with Batchelor Press) has developed a great pile of resources with several different Noongar clans. There are also twelve short language lessons in development for NITV so stay tuned in for those. We also got to hear how language has been incorporated into the Djidi Djidi Aboriginal School in Bunbury. Moorditj!