Jane Simpson

Bringing injustice out into the open

5 February 201123 January 2010 by Jane Simpson

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.

Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity – Margaret Florey

5 February 201122 January 2010 by Jane Simpson

[From Margaret Florey] The Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity’s web site has had a makeover! Visit the site to check out the changes, and the new information. If you’ve been using the site, you may need to refresh it in your browser to view the updated site. We’ll continue to add information to the site, … Read more

Call for submissions- National Indigenous Education Action Plan

5 February 201121 January 2010 by Jane Simpson

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:

New titles in Sydney University eScholarship repository

5 February 201114 January 2010 by Jane Simpson

Some recent accessions on Indigenous languages to the Sydney eScholarship repository:

Jeremy Hammond’s Honours thesis The Grammar of Nouns and Verbs in Whitesands, an Oceanic Language of Southern Vanuatu. A ripper read for Oceanists thinking about arguments for there being distinct categories of nouns and verbs.
Aidan Wilson’s Honours thesis Negative Evidence in Linguistics: The case of Wagiman Complex Predicates. What’s a possible complex predicate? Good to read in conjunction with Stephen Wilson’s University of Sydney Honours thesis also on Wagiman which was published by CSLI as Coverbs and Complex Predicates in Wagiman. NOTE: Aidan is not Stephen.
My 1985 paperlet “How Warumungu people express new concepts” published in the long dead, still lamented journal Language in Central Australia (issue 4, the last issue before it morphed into Language in Aboriginal Australia and died a couple of issues later). It was inspired by Geoffrey O’Grady’s 1960 paper, “New concepts in Nyangumarda: some data on linguistic acculturation” [1], and was followed by Rob Amery’s 1993 paper “Encoding new concepts in old languages: a case study of Kaurna, the language of the Adelaide Plains” [2]. I think the topic is due for further exploration. Psycholinguists are getting into it experimentally, but it’s important to understand what actually has happened when people have had to find new ways of talking about things.

Job advertisement: Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre

5 February 201126 November 2009 by Jane Simpson

Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre SENIOR LINGUIST Key position available in one of Australia’s leading language centres. This is a great opportunity to work in a vibrant and complex linguistic and cultural environment. Be part of a passionate, hard-working team. We are looking for an experienced, motivated linguist who can engage with the community … Read more

Book announcement “Endangered Languages of Austronesia” – Margaret Florey

5 February 201125 November 2009 by Jane Simpson

[from Margaret Florey] Endangered Languages of Austronesia (Oxford University Press, 2009), edited by Margaret Florey, is now published. Many of the languages in the diverse and linguistically rich Austronesian language family are undocumented and endangered. This book draws together research from authors actively involved in language documentation to provide a critical account of current knowledge. … Read more

Concluding the ELIIP workshop

5 February 201117 November 2009 by Jane Simpson

In a few weeks’ time reports and powerpoints on the ELIIP workshop will be up on the ELIIP website for discussion.
I took away memories of the beauty of the mountains and saltlakes, the strange comfortableness of bison, and a slight increase in knowledge about the Latter Day Saints – how can one not feel sympathetic to the nineteenth century Welsh Mormon who set sail for Zion equipped with an English and Welsh dictionary.
There’s a lively group of people at the University of Utah working on native American languages (from Brazil north to Ojibway). One project that especially struck me was a Shoshone outreach program. Several Shoshone were at the ELIIP workshop. Last year 10 Shoshone high school students came to the Center for a six week summer camp funded by a donation from a local mining company. In the program they learned some Shoshone language, as well as crafts from Shoshone elders. The students worked as paid interns to do some work on language documentation and prepare language learning material in Shoshone. It was a great introduction, not only to language documentation but to university life generally. What a good idea!]
Back to the workshop. Yes we need something like ELIIP – a list of endangered languages with information about them and pointers to other sources about them. But it won’t work unless it is aimed at more than just linguists. And it must point to rich information. And it must be inclusive. And it must be simple to use. And, since there is very little money around, it must be designed to have as low maintenance costs as possible.
Summing up, I’d say the workshop allowed various ideas to gel about what the one-stop shop for languages would look like. I thought the most important were:

Avoid duplication. A lot of work has already gone into collecting material. Don’t waste it.
Data-freshness. People will be drawn to the site if they believe that the data is fresh, rich and reliable.
…comes at a cost Whatever’s built has to be updatable and maintainable at minimal cost. So maintaining links – even with a web crawler – is beyond many sites
Buy-in If it’s to work, lots of communities, archives and linguists need to be able to add in material easily and to feel that it belongs to all of us
Simple interface for searching AND for uploading. This means paying for good design and testing with a range of users. Maybe there’ll be several interfaces for different types of user.
Wish-things
- There was a strong swell of opinion in favour of digital archives where people could deposit digital data files and update information easily
- Snapshots in time People will want to know what a language was like 10 years ago, 20 years ago – how many speakers, did children speak it and so on.
- Localisation How to translate the material into other languages for countries where outreach on the importance of helping speakers keep their languages is really needed? Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Pidgins and French may be the main lingua francas for some of these areas.

A divide was proposed by Gary Simons between curated web services (where people create data and people manage that data) – like Wikipedia – and aggregating web services (where automatic harvesters harvest data from archives, libraries etc) – like Google. I think the consensus was that we needed both – linking to information that is out there, and filling in the gaps.http://www.language-archives.org/OLAC/metadata.html

Announcement – Consortium on Training in Language Documentation and Conservation – Margaret Florey

5 February 201116 November 2009 by Jane Simpson

[from Margaret Florey]

We are pleased to announce the formation of the Consortium on Training in Language Documentation and Conservation(CTLDC). The CTLDC has been established as an international response to the crisis confronting the world’s languages by co-Directors Carol Genetti (University of California at Santa Barbara and InField founder) and Margaret Florey (co-founder and co-Director of the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity).

The central aim of the CTLDC is to build a global resource for all those who are actively working to maintain linguistic diversity through fostering collaboration among people who are engaged in training in language documentation and conservation. The CTLDC will provide a critical network to foster communication and collaboration, and enhance the sharing of skills and resources.
An international Planning Group has been established to guide the development of the Consortium. The Planning Group (listed below) comprises representatives of organizations which are at the forefront of supporting linguistic diversity through planning and administering training programs, creating funding strategies to support linguistic diversity, designing tools to provide more accurate data on trends in linguistic diversity, establishing resource networks, and developing and influencing language policy. UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage Section has agreed to host the first meeting of the Planning Group in Paris in late 2010. That meeting will allow us to prioritize activities and establish the structure and goals of the Consortium.

Following the 2010 meeting, the CTLDC will open for international membership and will begin to work towards its longer-term goals, to

construct a clearinghouse of materials accessible to LDC trainers and community members from across the globe,
provide a forum for the sharing of curricula, teaching and assessment strategies, and methods,
facilitate the explicit discussion of the goals and models currently being developed and implemented for training in language documentation and conservation (LDC),
encourage partnerships between trainers of varied backgrounds and experiences,
take into account a wide variety of perspectives and approaches by bringing together instructors from universities, communities, intensive institutes, school-based programs, language centers, and other initiatives,
promote new collaborations, exchange ideas, and support training efforts worldwide,
identify successful practices for LDC education,
establish ethical and other principles to guide practitioners in documentation, conservation, and capacity-building activities,
develop strategies to increase the range of funding opportunities to support LDC training at all levels,
publicize LDC activities and events to raise greater awareness about the importance of linguistic diversity.

We will continue to provide updated information as the Consortium develops, and we look forward to many of you joining us as members and sharing your expertise to further support linguistic diversity.

Our language our flower: Day 1 of ELIIP

5 February 201113 November 2009 by Jane Simpson

This blogpost comes to you from Salt Lake City at the University of Utah, thanks to the Center for American Indian Languages which is co-hosting a Workshop on Endangered Languages Information and Infrastructure (ELIIP) project with Linguist List(organised by Lyle Campbell, Helen Aristar Dry, Anthony Aristar). It’s intended mostly for the specialist, but there’s an interesting push to reach out to the general public- if they don’t understand what we do, they won’t support it. Cute and less cute facts help in conveying this – more on this later.
A thousand flowers on endangered languages are blooming on the web, from Wikipedia to blogs on particular languages to the language resources catalogued by libraries. Helen Aristar Dry suggested that users want to view the whole flowerbed from a convenient vantage point. That’s the II of ELIIP: do we need a comprehensive catalogue/database/website/portal of endangered languages?
So suppose Jane LUser does a google search on the web for ‘Ossetian language’.

Story over production values: TV in Indigenous languages

5 February 20113 November 2009 by Jane Simpson

I was just sent this from ICTV Limited (Alice Springs) – looks like v good news
Indigenous Community Television Ltd
Showing Our Way MEDIA RELEASE
22 October 2009
ICTV RELAUNCH
Remote Aboriginal Communities to celebrate the return of their Indigenous Community Television service
An official launch of Indigenous Community Television – ICTV – will take place in DJARINDJIN COMMUNITY (200km north of Broome) at 6pm, November 13 2009.