Endangered Languages and Cultures

Those who do not learn from history…

5 February 201117 August 2007 by Jane Simpson

…doom other people to repeat it. In this case, the other people are Aborigines.
Govt hails passage of NT indigenous laws, August 17, 2007 – 12:39PM, The Age
“A historic day for Aboriginal people”, according to the Government. Indeed, and this is what Bob Brown wants us to remember it for:

Senator BOB BROWN (Tasmania – Leader of the Australian Greens) (7.50 pm) Hansard 16/8/07
…We know from experience right around the world – from the Gaelic experience to the experience of people in the Americas – that the loss of language brings great anguish and depression, which visits people for centuries afterwards. Yet this government seems to have put that aside in the move – which must be very clear about here – to say to Indigenous people, ‘Take up the predominant culture or else.’ […]. I want that on the record, so that no-one reading about this moment in history 10, 50, 100 or 500 years from now can say, “If only they had known what they were doing to Indigenous culture in Australia.” We all know. The government has made its choice. It has the bulldozer; it has the numbers, and we do not. But let nobody in this place say that it did not know what this would do to Indigenous culture, custom, law, language, pride and wellbeing into the future of this nation.

Feast of indigenous song – Darwin

5 February 201116 August 2007 by Linda Barwick

It’s been a rich week for lovers of indigenous music.
On Tuesday (14 August) in Maningrida I attended the launch of the new Wurrurrumi Kun-borrk CD from Sydney University Press (which you can order online). In attendance were the songman Kevin Djimarr and notes-writer Murray Garde.
To quote the blurb on the flyer:
Kevin Djimarr, one of Western Arnhem Land’s pre-eminent composer-performers, presents a complete repertory of traditional kun-borrk songs from the Maningrida area. The album was recorded with the support of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and Maningrida Arts. Murray Garde’s extensive notes, which accompany the audio CD, include authoritative translations and explanations of Djimarr’s song texts. They open up this extraordinary music to a national and international audience, while remaining true to Djimarr’s own particular artistic vision, communicating in a lively and accessible fashion the unique qualities of his work.
The CD is the first in a new series from the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia. We are currently seeking funding to enable us to continue the series: please let us know of any thoughts!
On Friday night (17 August), the University of Sydney’s own Professor of Musicology, Allan Marett, is presenting a free public talk as part of the Darwin Festival, “Why should we know about Aboriginal music?” Location: MAGNT Theatrette, Museum and Art Gallery of the NT, Date / Time: 17 August 2007, from 4.30pm.
And as I write we are gearing up for the 6th Symposium on Indigenous Music and Dance, hosted by Charles Darwin University’s School of Australian Indigenous Knowledge Systems, to be held on Saturday 18 August at Charles Darwin University’s Casuarina Campus (Building 22 room 01). Registration is free but please do so online.
This will be a fantastic event, with participation by a number of indigenous performers.

725 500 new bureaucrats to the rescue of abused children

5 February 201113 August 2007 by Jane Simpson

Update: “unjustified, racist and obscene:” see end for explanation
Update 2 I missed the 140 extra DEWR people to manage the CDEP changes, and a few others.. up to 725 thanks Bob!
The National Emergency Response is about job creation – 350 new Centrelink workers and 150 new FACSIA staff. Just 66 additional police. Fewer than one per targeted community. That eats up most of the $500 million. No money for the housing shortfall, sexual abuse counsellors, new classrooms…..
The Senate votes on Tuesday 14 August on whether to pass the NT National Emergency Legislation. If you want them to delay or modify it, write to your senators now. Individually, or GetUp has a campaign.
Heaps more material has appeared on the site of the Senate Inquiry into the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007 & Related Bills
– 80 or so extra submissions since when I looked. I checked every 10th – all opposed.
– extra material tabled
– the transcript of Friday’s hearing
– answers to questions asked by committee members
[Update: you can now download the Senate Inquiry report which includes the transcript. Further comments on the report at the end:]

“And I for one welcome our new * overlords.”

6 June 201712 August 2007 by David Nash

The snowclone title I owe to Mark Liberman’s LanguageLog post.

I’ve continued to track which communities are being targetted by the “Howard/Brough plan” (last update on 22 July). Last Tuesday we learnt which communities will get a 5-year lease to the Commonwealth. These are set out in the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007 and its Schedules, wherein s.2(1) specifies commencement dates of the leases.

Senate inquiry on the NT National Emergency Response bills

5 February 201111 August 2007 by Jane Simpson

The wind dropped in Canberra this morning – just as well for the small demonstration following the La Perouse community’s Aboriginal flag up the hill to Parliament House. A mixture of the Green Left, the young, and many grey and white-haired people with long experience in Indigenous communities. The main message was – tell Australians that the NT National Emergency Response legislation won’t stop child abuse, that it may make matters worse, not better. Far too many Australians believe that the proposed legislation is Doing Something About Child Abuse. They don’t know that it may well be Doing Something Bad About Child Abuse.
When I got back, I found an e-mail from GetUp! who are running a campaign for signatures to delay or modify or vote against the bills – before this Tuesday (14th August) when the Senate votes on it.
Did you know that receiving an e-mail publicising a demonstration could be illegal on public computers in most Aboriginal communities in the NT once the legislation is passed? (And as for porn – if their spam filter doesn’t work, they’re stuffed). Sloppy drafting.

How to fix the NT National Emergency Response Legislation

5 February 201110 August 2007 by Jane Simpson

For a clear account of problems with the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Legislation, a list of possible unintended bad consequences, and some solutions to some of the problems, go to the Submission of the Human Rights And Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) to today’s public hearing on the legislation by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee.
Here are just a few of the possible bad consequences they note:

We need a bill of rights

5 February 20118 August 2007 by Jane Simpson

I don’t want to think about the legislation the Government rammed through yesterday– Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007, No. 2007(Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) A Bill for an Act to respond to the Northern Territory’s national emergency, and for related purposes. I don’t want to think about the Opposition supporting this bill. … Read more

Justice for the Stolen Generation

5 February 20112 August 2007 by Jane Simpson

A small glimmer of good news amidst the increasing storm clouds of concern about how the loss of the Community Development Employment Program will make some Indigenous Australian communities unliveable and unviable. For the first time, an Aboriginal person who was removed from his family as a child has successfully sued a state government for … Read more

British Sign Language – a new corpus project

5 February 20111 August 2007 by Jane Simpson

Excellent news! The Economic and Social Science Research Council of the UK has just awarded a £1 million grant to Adam Schembri for what sounds like important work, The British Sign Language (BSL) Corpus Project: Sociolinguistic variation, language change, language contact and lexical frequency in BSL (2007-2010), which builds on the work he and Trevor Johnston and Louise de Beuzeville and others have been doing on the sign language of the deaf community of Australia, Auslan (e.g. the Auslan corpus project and Adam and Trevor’s recent book. Adam got his PhD in 2002 from the University of Sydney, for a thesis Issues in the analysis of polycomponential verbs in Australian Sign Language (Auslan)).
Adam’s the Principal Investigator – based at University College, London, and other investigators include Bencie Woll, Kearsy Cormier, Frances Elton, Rachel Sutton-Spence (University of Bristol), Graham Turner (Heriot Watt University), Margaret Deuchar (University of Wales Bangor) and Donall O’Baoill (Queens University Belfast). Here’s the project summary.

Towards a social linguistics

5 February 201131 July 2007 by admin

Several contributors to this blog, including yours truly, and no doubt a number of our readers too, have recently been bitten by the Facebook bug. Facebook bills itself as “a social utility that connects you with the people around you”, and its kind of fun too. In addition to being able to track what your friends are up to, it is also possible to join groups of like-minded individuals to share ideas, and socialise (reminds me of those sessions in the bar at the end of a hard day’s work at a linguistics conference). Along with the predictable groups centered around Noam Chomsky, there is also “You’re a Linguist? How many languages do you speak?”, “Typologists United”, and my particular favourite “Thomas Payne is My Hero” whose members are:
“dedicated to the source of all linguistics knowledge, Thomas Payne. His manuals are so good that they can apply to any discipline at any time. Physics problems? Open the textbook and realize that you should really be a linguistics major. Life? Look up grammatical relations and discover meaning in existence. Linguistics? You better just read the whole thing. Oh Thomas Payne, what would we do without you?”
Facebook is part of what has been termed “Web 2.0” by Tim O’Reilly.