Avoiding a silent future

It is yet another in a long line of Aboriginal languages that have vanished under the impact of white settlement - and many more are teetering on the brink of extinction throughout Australia.

In so many ways this is the unspoken tragedy underlying the whole history of Aboriginal dispossession. For when you lose your land, at least you can fight back to reclaim it. But when you lose your language, a whole way of being, a whole cultural universe, is lost forever.

It is thought about 250 Aboriginal languages were spoken around Australia at the time of the white invasion, with many dialects within each language group. Perhaps just 100 of these still survive, but of these most are expected to die within the next generation as the last handful of speakers pass away.

The recently released 2001 Census figures bear this out: across the country 80 per cent of Indigenous people now speak English at home.

In the Northern Territory the picture is nowhere near as bleak, with about 61 per cent of our Indigenous people speaking an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander language at home. More than 20 Aboriginal languages spoken in the NT are still regarded as being healthy - that is, languages still being learnt by children.

However, what has happened is that the traditional languages have been replaced by new Aboriginal languages, variously called Aboriginal English, pidgin and Kriol. Indeed, linguists now regard Kriol as a language in its own right, with established grammar and vocabulary. Kriol grew out of pidgin English used on early missions and cattle stations, and incorporates traditional language words, meanings and sounds. Indeed, linguists now regard Kriol as a language in its own right, with established grammar and vocabulary.

In the Alice Springs region, linguist Robert Hoogenraad - who works with the NT Department of Employment, Education and Training - said the movement of groups of Aboriginal people onto other people's land over the past 100 years had led to much mixing of language.

What you have around Alice Springs is the formation of a new Aboriginal language which, unlike Kriol to the north, is based almost entirely on Aboriginal words from a number of different Central Australian and Western Desert languages.

Linguist, Robert Hoogenraad

Murray Garde, a consultant linguist working with the Northern Land Council in Jabiru, says that the Kakadu region - Big Bill's country - used to be highly linguistically diverse.

Now there's just Gundjehmi left, and even that language is seriously threatened

Linguist, Murray Garde

Sadly, Mr Garde said most of the Kakadu region languages - Gagadju was an exception, thanks to the work of linguist Mark Harvey - died before linguists had any opportunity to describe them.

In the past 20 years, most of the last speakers of the now-vanished languages would have died.

Murray Garde

Dr Harvey's work bears this out. Although Big Bill Neidjie may have been the last speaker of Gagadju, the last fluent speaker was Peggy Balmana who died several years ago. Big Bill was also a fluent speaker of the near-extinct Amurdak - his mother's tongue - and spoke mainly Iwadja at home.

According to Two-Way Learning Program language resource officer Rebecca Green, still-vibrant language groups include Tiwi, Bininj Kun-Wok, Mawng, Iwadja, Burarra, Ndjebbana, Na-kara, Gurr-goni, Rembarrnga, Anindilyakwa, Murrinh-Patha, the Yolngu family of languages (including Dhuwal/Dhuwala dialects such as Djambarrpuyngu), Western Desert language (including Pitjantjatjara, Pintupi and Luritja), Warlpiri, Arrernte, Alyawarr and Anmatyerr.

However, just as many, if not more, Aboriginal languages in the NT are in danger of extinction. Anthropologist Robin Hodgson from the Katherine Regional Language Centre said of the 32 languages spoken in the Katherine region, 25 were seriously in danger of dying out.

In the Central Desert region, Mr Hoogenraad said Pertame was the local language under greatest stress while some dialects had vanished entirely.

So what's been done to arrest this linguistic annihiliation?

Paul Bubb, Manager of the Two-Way Learning program, told Land Rights News there were now 12 NT Government funded two-way learning schools spread throughout the NT, with more funding available through the Commonwealth's Indigenous Education Strategic Initiative Program (IESIP) to teach Indigenous languages in NT schools.

The NLC is involved in the language preservation effort through its Caring for Country unit, which runs a Traditional Knowledge Recovery Project to record essential information about flora, fauna and bush tucker in the native tongues of Aboriginal people throughout the Top End.

ATSIC also helps via its Languages Access Initiatives Program (LAIP), which has helped fund the preservation of Indigenous languages over the past three years.

Mr Garde says all of this and more is vital to maintain the NT's rich linguistic heritage - otherwise, thousands of years of accumulated wisdom will be lost.