'The sky's the limit': Re-awakening Indigenous languages that have been 'actively suppressed'

Australia Broadcast Center

3 days ago

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this story contains images and voices of people who have died.
Mikayla Helms remembers driving 1,000 kilometres during school holidays to outback New South Wales, where she'd listen to her grandmother tell dreaming stories and call for the rain to come.
Raised as a proud Ngiyampaa woman, the Canberra student always treasured her time spent on country in Menindee, in the far west of New South Wales.
But it was only when she began a Year 12 school project that she realised she wanted to learn her great-grandmother Aunty Beryl Carmichael's language.
"It was quite new to me, I've always been very in touch with my Aboriginal culture but never specifically … my mob," Ms Helms said.
For her project, she started making an online dictionary of the Ngiyampaa — a language without any fluent speakers.
Two years later, the medical science student is part of a growing number of people working to re-awaken "silenced" First Nations languages.
And experts think, when it comes to revitalising languages, there's been a turning of the tide.
Ms Helms's learning journey has been helped along by the treasure trove of stories, books and language recordings left behind when Aunty Beryl died in 2024.
"It is very special for me and I do feel like I'm keeping her alive," Ms Helms said.
"Right now I'm focusing on documenting everything from my nan and her memories.
"[I have] a book that she wrote in 1986 and most of the book is just her poetry and stories that she's written, but at the end she's got a bunch of Ngiyampaa words that she's documented."
The process has also inspired Ms Helms to help others, like Aunty Beryl did.
"She was one of the most important people in my life and she still is … I hope to have as much of an impact on community as she did," she said.
"I would like to be a rural doctor and go out to remote communities.
Ms Helms's work is crucial because, like many other First Nations languages, the Ngiyampaa dialects are considered under threat.
In fact, Australia has one of the highest rates of language loss in the world.
At the time of colonisation, there were more than 250 First Nations languages spoken throughout Australia.
Since then, more than half of these languages have been "silenced", and about one quarter are only spoken by Elders, according to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATIS).
Just 12 languages are considered relatively strong, and spoken as a first language.
"Languages weren't lost, they didn't just disappear out of view — they've been actively suppressed," AITSIS Centre for Australian Languages director Lauren Reed said.
Ms Reed said First Nations communities were still being prevented from using their languages through past policies like the Stolen Generation, and due to limited access to translation services.
But a positive shift in the number of communities engaging in language learning has experts hopeful the numbers could be turned around.
An AIATSIS survey, released later this year, found as many as 60 languages have been "reawakened" over the past five years — previously, that number sat at 31.
"Communities are working really hard to bring their languages back into use after generations of being silenced," Ms Reed said.
For example, Indigenous languages are being taught in a growing number of pre-schools across the country.
In Coffs Harbour, on the NSW mid-north coast, you'll find the state's first bi-lingual school with an Indigenous language, Gumbaynggirr.
And in NSW's Central West, the Wiradjuri Condobolin Corporation have produced games, books and a dictionary app in Wiradjuri, Yorta Yorta, Nari Nari and Wamba Wamba languages.
"With the right amount of support, with community drive, the sky's the limit for Indigenous communities in terms of reawakening their languages," Ms Reed said.
Like Ms Helms, Ngyiampaa woman Lesley Woods is committed to strengthening the Ngiyampaa dialect.
She has a linguistics PhD on revitalising languages, and is completing an accessible Ngiyampaa dictionary, relying heavily on old recordings and documentation.
"My goal is to get as much spoken language out there from those old recordings, so people can hear the language," Dr Woods said.
Dr Woods said individual efforts to learn language, like Ms Helms is doing, were an important means to reconnect with culture and country.
"Whatever people can do and in whatever way they want to do it is brilliant and to be applauded," she said.
"Undertaking to learn a language … is a lot of hard work."
She's hopeful these efforts mean that one day, Ngiyampaa will join the list of languages being learnt back into fluency.
"That blows my mind, that you can go from just having a few old speakers to lots of people learning to speak again," Dr Woods said.