NT elders fear Aboriginal languages are being lost, as communities band together to help save them

Australia Broadcast Center

17 hours ago

Three years ago, the United Nations issued a dire warning: Australia was one of dozens of countries facing a mass extinction event.
But it wasn't flora or fauna that was at risk of being lost — it was languages.
A previous UN forum had found 40 per cent of the estimated 6,700 languages around the world were in danger of disappearing — most of them Indigenous.
In the three years since, dozens of Australian Indigenous communities have fought back against that decline, working with archives and the knowledge of elders to revitalise their native languages.
In northern Australia, the effort last month brought together more than 50 Indigenous leaders from over 30 languages groups for a forum on protecting languages.
The leaders developed a list of recommendations across a broad range of areas, including education and employment, to be finalised and presented to stakeholders in late August.
For Rarrtjiwuy Herdman — one of the organisers of the Top End Langauges Forum — language preservation has been a lifelong passion.
She has been working to keep her native language of Dhaŋu alive, a Yolŋu language from north-east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.
Ms Herdman said time was running out for some languages, with the passing of more Aboriginal clan elders in recent years.
"I've sadly only recently lost another family member, a speaker of Dhaŋu, a mentor and a father to me," she said.
The Yolŋu woman said in order to keep clan languages alive, they needed to be spoken at work, in the community and in schools.
"There's an assumption that all of our languages are equally being support[ed] across the Top End area," Ms Herdman said.
"Some of our languages are being supported in schools [and] in community … but a few of our languages are actually endangered."
While Ms Herdman is worried about languages becoming "extinct", she is also afraid the younger generation is becoming lost without their language.
"The sense of responsibility to continue our languages is something that our elders and leaders are worried about, and particularly for our clan languages," she said.
In 2022, the United Nations launched the International Decade of Languages global action plan, in response to the thousands of international Indigenous languages it said were disappearing at "alarming rates".
At the time, a research paper led by the Australian National University found Australia had one of the worst records in the world for language loss.
According to a 2019 survey by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), out of 250 Indigenous Australian languages that were active prior to colonisation, only 12 were still being actively acquired by children.
The report also showed that more than half of Indigenous Australian languages still in use were only being spoken by elders.
Three years on from the launch of the global action plan, AIATSIS Centre for Australian Languages director Lauren Reed said Australia was in a better position.
She said the Australian government had since "seen the real need to turn the tide on language loss" and set up a national policy partnership to address the issue.
"There are signs of hope that have been growing since the beginning of [2022]," she said.
Ms Reed said many Indigenous language speakers needed to feel their language was "relevant" to the Western world, including seeing it used in mainstream and social media.
She said she liked to think of out-of-use languages as "sleeping" rather than "extinct".
Renfred Manmurulu, a speaker at the forum, presented about his South Goulburn Island language, Mawng.
Mr Manmurulu said in many traditional practices, such as Mawng songlines, culture was inseparable from language.
"It's a window of who you are and where you're from," he said.
Mr Manmurulu said he had noticed many in the younger generations choosing to speak the "dominant" Indigenous language dialect of their region over other, "endangered" dialects spoken in smaller communities.
"If you don't use the language — if you, say, use the universal language English more often than your own language — well then, that's the ending of the language," he said.
He said he hoped young people could come up with new ways of using technology to make their dialects more widespread.