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AUSTRALIA: Indigenous Languages Under Threat

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Mar 10 2009 (IPS) - Language in Australia revolves around the nation’s main tongue, English, and the likes of Italian, Greek, Cantonese and Arabic, used by hundreds of thousands of Australians. There are also about 100 indigenous languages still spoken here, though most face a bleak future.

The 2005 National Indigenous Languages Survey Report found that only 18 of the estimated 250 known indigenous languages were considered "strong," with speakers across all age groups. A further 110 were listed as endangered as only older people spoke them.

The rest have all but disappeared.

"I would say that the outlook is still pretty grim," says Paul Herbert, national manager of the Federation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages (FATSIL), describing the current prospects for indigenous languages.

It is a perspective supported by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), whose new edition of the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger was released on Feb.19, just two days prior to International Mother Language Day, held annually to promote linguistic and cultural diversity.

The Atlas notes that of the world’s roughly 6,000 languages, 2,500 are endangered. In Australia, six languages have become extinct since the 1950s and 42 are listed as "critically endangered." A further 60 are in other, less severe states of danger.

Concerned about the threat facing indigenous languages here, Herbert recently organised a petition to the federal House of Representatives calling for a national indigenous languages policy to be developed. Signed by more than 1,200 people, the petition warned that concerns over indigenous disadvantage in Australia overlooked the vital topic of indigenous languages.

"Language should be seen as a pathway to education, to healthier and wealthier communities, not as a separate, subordinate issue," it reads.

But despite the gloomy outlook, the petitioners also noted that efforts to preserve and even re-introduce indigenous languages are happening around Australia.

A report released last December on indigenous language training in schools also found that people have been striving to keep languages alive.

"Currently, many Indigenous communities are working hard to maintain or revive their languages. Within schools, also, there is increasing activity related to the teaching of Indigenous languages," say the authors of ‘A Way Forward.’

Prepared by the independent Australian Council for Educational Research with funding from the government, the report revealed that more than 16,000 Indigenous and 13,000 non-Indigenous students are involved in an indigenous language programme.

These programmes range from first language maintenance and language learning – for cases where the studied language is not a first language – through to revival and language awareness.

The 80 languages involved are being taught in some 260 schools, most of which are government institutions located in the Northern Territory, Western Australia, New South Wales and South Australia.

But while education minister Julia Gillard has expressed the government’s resolve to support both indigenous and non-indigenous language learning in schools, Herbert told IPS that the funds allocated for indigenous languages amount to official neglect.

Last month, the government announced increased funding for the study of Asian languages in schools, with Australian dollars 62.4 million (40.3 million US dollars) provided until mid-2011 to fund the education of students in Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean.

"The budget for indigenous languages is around AUD 20 million (12.9 million US dollars). So, AUD 62.4 million compared to AUD 20 million for a group of languages that is clearly in danger," intimates Herbert.

He wants those languages still regarded as "strong" to be given formal regional status. "The value [of preserving Indigenous languages] is that it allows people to not live in fear of loss of culture," opines Herbert.

He describes language as "the conveyor of culture. If language isn’t protected then culture isn’t protected," argues Herbert.

That language is inseparable from culture is a point also made by John Bradley from Monash University’s Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies. "Language and culture have to travel together but if you lose the language then things disappear," he says.

Bradley has been working with the Yanyuwa people in northern Australia for the last 30 years on issues of natural and cultural resource management, including on the maintenance of language.

A fluent Yanyuwa speaker himself, Bradley sees a genuine connection between the language and the environment of the country around the Gulf of Carpentaria inhabited by the Yanyuwa.

"I get the feeling that this is a language that belongs to that land. It really, somehow, comes out of the land and that when you’re speaking these languages you’re giving life to that land because it is so descriptive and thick," he says.

As an example, Bradley says that in Yanyuwa there are 25 ways to describe a dugong, a marine mammal found mostly in northern Australian coastal waters but which also inhabits southeast Asian seas and parts of the subcontinent and eastern Africa.

But with just four or five fluent speakers of Yanyuwa left – down from around 260 speakers when Bradley first began working with the Yanyuwa – the possibility that the language’s 25 terms for ‘dugong’ would be replaced by the one English version has been high.

Bradley says that there are many issues embedded in why an indigenous Australian language dies, including wrongful education processes, massacres and colonialism. He argues that these affect a culture’s continuity, and languages may be lost if the endangered ones are not maintained in one way or another.

In order to preserve the Yanyuwa language, Bradley and a team of IT experts from Monash have been working with community members to develop bilingual animations, which they hope will not only re-engage the younger generations with their language and culture, but will also provide a source from which future generations can garner further knowledge about Yanyuwa language and culture.

"Many of the older people I’ve worked with have travelled around Australia. They’ve seen what loss is in other parts of Australia and they don’t want it for themselves. They don’t want to die leaving nothing," says Bradley.

Indigenous People – IPS Special Coverage (https://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/indigenous_peoples/index.asp)