Endangered Languages and Cultures

The first Koori Centre lecture for 2008 was given by John Hobson, “Towards a model for training Indigenous languages educators in Australia” [the full paper will be up via the e-repository shortly). And a timely and thought-inducing talk it was too.
John’s recently been to Canada, the US and Aotearoa /NZ, looking at Indigenous languages education there. He’s come back convinced that we need to do a lot more in Australia to improve the way Indigenous languages are taught. The price of doing nothing is that kids will lose interest in Indigenous languages, and won’t put the effort in that’s needed to go beyond saying a few words and singing a song or two.
On the (highly) political side, he’s come back convinced that the existence of treaties has created climates much more favourable to Indigenous languages rights in those countries than we have in Australia.
On the money side, he noted the major difference between the user-pays attitude to education found in the US and Canada, and the reliance on governments here and in NZ. Native Americans and Native Canadians are using money from mining, from gambling, from whatever resources they have to pay for language work. In practice this means a great diversity in what’s on offer, since some groups have far more resources than others. It also means that they rely more on summer and winter institutes (the inpsirations for our Indigenous Languages Institute and Australian Linguistics Institutes) than we in Australia have.
On the less (but still) political side, he highlighted the growing realisation that, like any children learning languages, Indigenous children need qualified teachers who are fluent speakers of the language. (This point has been emphasised by Timoti Karetu (Inaugural Commissioner of Maori Language) *).

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After South Australia, and New South Wales, another Australian State gets serious about bringing Indigenous languages into schools.
The Queensland Studies Authority has released a flyer [.pdf] about Indigenous languages, affirming that, among other things:
“understanding the language backgrounds of Indigenous students is a critical factor in the successful learning of Standard Australian English as part of formal education in Queensland schools”
and
“it is valuable for all students to understand the language diversity of Australia’s Indigenous peoples”
and finally, the promise..
“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community perspectives on valuing, maintaining and reviving local languages will be supported through our products and services.”
A start, a start! Good on the many people who have worked to get this up.

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The Australian‘s running a campaign against cultural appropriateness where it pertains to Indigenous Australians. Cultural awareness courses, out the window! Cultural training for journalists? No need! Last Saturday they had a front-page story taking up a paper due out this week on Indigenous children’s education by the economist Helen Hughes of the Centre for Independent Studies. Helen Hughes, so The Australian claims, is saying that educational apartheid exists in the Northern Territory (a claim denied by Nadine Williams, the very experienced President of the NT Branch of the Australian Education Union, but The Australian buries her view at the end of the article. A teacher talking about education isn’t sexy; an economist is).
What The Australian is licking its chops over is that apparently Hughes is inveighing against ‘culturally appropriate’ teaching methods.
I’m with them in that the term ‘culturally appropriate’ has been over-/ab-/mis- and sloppily -used ( Lexical Integrity, die!), and in that the idea of Western science and Western maths versus Indigenous science and Indigenous maths looks like a false opposition. Science is science – I want the bridges I cross over and the planes I fly in to be constructed according to the best available science and technology, Indigenous, non-Indigenous, Chinese, English or whatever.
Where we part company is as to how the best available understandings of science and maths are to be taught and in recognising that Indigenous people have knowledge which should be built on.

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