The FATSIL NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 1999
ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER CORPORATION OF LANGUAGES
VOLUME 12
Billy Trott
Forum calls for more Govt support for languages
The Speakers at the FATSIL National Indigenous Languages Forum, held in Perth in early October, targeted the need for Government to upgrade languages to a priority area, when allocating resources for indigenous cultural heritage.
RIGHT: Billy Trott was one of the large group from Kalgoorlie who helped with the display at the National Indigenous Languages Expo in Perth.
THERE may be some of you who don't know that the FATSIL office has a staff of two part- time workers, which means there aren't too many fights over the leave roster, but the Christmas break-up can get a little predictable.
It also means that when one of us is sick, the chaos level can skyrocket.
Our secretary, Ysola Best is in that predicament at the moment. It's over four months now since anyone has seen her walk fully upright and she faces spending her Christmas holidays recovering from back surgery.
Springs — Northern Territory was elected to the FATSIL Executive Committee at the recent AGM. He will take up the position of Honorary Secretary and joins Chairperson, Lester Coyne, WA; Vice Chairperson, Denise Karpany, SA, and Sandra Smith from Victoria who has returned to the position of Treasurer. Ysola Best was appointed as the Public Officer: Thanks were given to outgoing executive members Eve Fesl and Jill Gallagher for the time and effort they have given to their duties on the committee, and to Lyle Johnson and Linda Turner who had served as State delegates.
Clockwise from back left: Doug Abbott, Sandra Smith, Denise Karpany and Lester Coyne.
A big thanks to Professor Sally Morgan and Ray Hart, from the Centre for Indigenous History and the Arts at the University of Western Australia, for their help in preparing for the EXPO and Forum. Ray spent many patient hours behind the video camera, capturing footage for a FATSIL blockbuster.
YortaYorta [Victoria]
Yorta Yorta is the language of the people whose ancestral homeland radiates from the junction of the Goulburn and Murray Rivers in North East Victoria.
STRONG family ties and sharing of knowledge across the generations, have enabled the YortaYorta language to survive, in part, to the present day, despite more than one hundred and fifty years of contact with English speakers.
RIGHT: The grandchildren of Geraldine Briggs, Aretha Briggs and David Wirrpanda, are both Yorta Yorta speakers. Aretha teaches the language to students at Worawa College. David learned the language and songs through both formal lessons and directly from his grandmother.
THE Barkly Region in the Northern Territory covers an area the size ofVictoria and extends from Tennant Creek northeast to the Gulf and east to the Queensland border.
Papulu Apparr-Kari Aboriginal Corporation is a title that comes from the Warumungu nation. It means 'home of language'. In total there are sixteen dialects of language spoken in the Barkly Region. These are; Warumungu, Warlpiri,Warlmanpa, Kaititj, Alyawarr, Wanbaya, Waanyi, Mara, Garrawa, Kudanji,Wakaya, Yanyuwa, Binbinga, Ngarnga, Mudburra and Jingili.
Olivia Robinson from Brisbane with Hervey Bay representative, Fiona Foley at the Brisbane conference in June.
QUEENSLAND language workers have prepared a proposal for the State Minister for Education, calling for changes to the LOTE program to include indigenous language as a study option where available.
Two days of solid work produced a range of constructive proposals from the Queensland State Language Conference, held in Brisbane at the end of June.
Dr Eve Fesl - welcoming feedback on language research.
The Draft of a 'Community Guide for the Recovery, Research and Development of Queensland's Indigenous Languages' covers a range of topics including; Boundaries; The causes of language loss; Phonetics; and Effective Procedures for research and recording. This subject matter is relevant for language work all over Australia.
The first extract reproduced here contains the introduction and discussion of "Languages" and "Dialects"
Presenter Dale Pascoe from Maningrida, Home Liaison Officer at Maningrida Community Education Centre.
THE IDEA of a national forum to display the wide range of material generated from language programs was welcomed by exhibitors and visitors to the National Indigenous Languages Expo. With everything from caps and card games to full colour picture books and syllabus resource material, there were plenty of ideas to stimulate the development of new programs or the enrichment of those already in place. For many of the people attending, this was their first opportunity to see the work from other areas.
The Expo not only helped share ideas for new programs, but allowed language workers the chance to make personal 'contacts' that will be invaluable for future work.
ABOVE: INDIGENOUS SERVICEMEN IN DARWIN DURING WORLD WAR II
FOR many years now, the Yugambeh people of South East Queensland have honoured all Indigenous servicemen and women who served in defence of their country, at an annual memorial service at Burleigh Heads.
Support for the commemoration grows each year, and a national register is being compiled, with information coming from family members rather than relying on official service records. It's known that there were people who did not want to identify themselves as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander at the time of enlistment because of the discriminatory regulations of the Defence Act.
"FRIENDS, by way of introduction, my name is George Pollock, and I am a member of the Burleigh Heads Sub-branch of the R.S.L. During WW2 I served as an artillery gunner in Darwin in the years 1942-43 and a few months into 44.
I was stationed on the west side of the Darwin Harbour at a place called "Waugite Battery", in contact with members of the Waugite people at Delissaville Aboriginal settlement where we obtained fresh water for our camp.
The army enlisted the superintendent Mr Jack Murray and quite a number of the men of the Waugite, Larrikia and the Tiwi people from Bathurst and Melville Island.
This group became known as the "Black Watch" and served as guides for the mounted unit of A.I.F. who did coast watching duties throughout the rough country of the Cox Peninsula.
The combined unit was known as the "Nackaroos" or Curtin's Cowboys.
A similar unit was set up under Naval command using small craft in their search for Jap landings.
