FollowIt’s been very hard for ordinary city-dwelling Australians (i.e. most of us) to learn Indigenous Australian languages. Most universities don’t teach them, and getting to Alice Springs for courses at the Institute for Aboriginal Development is out of most people’s reach. Summer schools, such as the Gumbaynggirr and Gamilaraay ones mentioned in a previous post are rare. So it had to come, and it has, but in a rather unusual way. The first public online course in an Australian Indigenous language is run out of a demountable building in Alice Springs by the Ngapartji Ngapartji group. Trevor Jamieson and his family want to tell the story of how they, some of the Spinifex people, were forced to leave their lands during the missile testing in the 1950s and 1960s. They do this at arts festivals, using Pitjantjatjara, English, songs and dance. And they run an on-line language program, so that future audiences can understand the Pitjantjatjara talk in their performances.
Hello Visitors…
Hello Language Hat readers If you’re new here, we’re a blog based roughly on the theme of endangered languages and cultures. All of the authors are based at Sydney University as either staff or students. If you’re interested in Indigenous Langauge Education, Australian or Papua New Guinean languages, Fieldwork and Fieldwork Technology, amongst other topics … Read more