In The News
Barngarla Songs
Nexus Arts will work with the Barngarla community (SA), Gunditj/Kurnai musician and student of linguistics Corey Theatre (SA), Ngaanyatjarra musician and choir leader Vonda Last (SA), Barngarla leader and linguistics student Stephen Atkinson (SA), and video and sound artist Dave Laslett (SA) to record traditional Barngarla songs and stories from Elders, and adapt and compose new songs in Barngarla through intergenerational music workshops for recording and public performance.
The Barngarla language reclamation was mentioned by Judge Mansfield in his Native Title decision:
22 January 2015
773: The fact that Barngarla language is now being relearnt by some claimants, due to the work of Adelaide University academic Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, is not evidence of continuity of the Barngarla language, although it is evidence of continuity of a notion of Barngarla identity, a notion that clearly existed amongst the Barngarla community at 1846, when Barngarla people told Schürmann of the “Barngarla matta”, and which can thus be inferred to have existed at sovereignty.
774: Other than knowledge of the Barngarla language acquired through the Adelaide University programme, there was very limited evidence to support the applicant’s assertion that current Barngarla claimants have “varying levels of knowledge and use of Barngarla language and words.”
Barngarla people rediscover their language
25 September 2013 | Nancia Guivarra, SBS News
It’s the first time ever in Australia that an Aboriginal language considered to be dead is being reclaimed from anthropological records. Today the Barngarla people of Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula began the long road to relearn their language
Language lost and regained
20 September 2013 | Stephen Atkinson, The Australian
As a child living in the Bush around Iron Knob, Whyalla and Port Augusta in South Australia my mother ran through the sandhills playing and talking with her brothers and sisters in their native Barngarla tongue. Life seemed to be happy and free.
Cultural historical event begins
25 July 2013 | Daniela Dean, Whyalla News
A historical event 175 years in the making took part in Whyalla on Friday, July 19.This event came in the form of a visit by the director of the Leipzig Lutheran Mission, Reverend Volker Dally, to the Barngarla people of Whyalla.
Barngarla delegation heads to Canberra
15 May 2013 | Daniela Dean, Whyalla News
Jeanita Taylor had a close encounter of the political kind when she was given the opportunity to take a ‘selfie’ with Kevin Rudd while visiting the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra earlier this year.
Language revival expert calls for native tongue title
28 August 2012 | Scoop Culture
Language revival expert calls for native tongue title. A world-renowned expert on language revival says the loss of language is more damaging than the loss of land for indigenous peoples, and governments are likely to come under increasing pressure to compensate indigenous peoples for this loss too.
Stop, revive and survive
06 June 2012 | Prof Ghil'ad Zuckermann, The Australian
Linguicide (language killing) and glottophagy (language eating) have made Australia the unlucky country. With globalisation, homogenisation and Coca-colonisation there will be more and more groups added to the forlorn club of the lost-heritage peoples.
Australia’s unspeakable indigenous tragedy
06 May 2012 | The Punch
Niina marni. That’s “hello” in the Kaurna language of the Adelaide Plains. And isn’t it a travesty that none of us learnt it in school. Of the 250 Aboriginal languages spoken across Australia before white settlement, only 15 (or six per cent) are still spoken fluently across all age ranges.
Aboriginal languages deserve revival
26 August 2009 | Prof Ghil'ad Zuckermann, The Australian
The more languages we know, the more likely we are to embrace different perspectives. The intellectual gains of being bilingual have been scientifically demonstrated. Most recently, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2009) described the cognitive gains in seven-month-old bilingual infants.