Minding the language: students give voice to endangered words (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Minding the language: students give voice to endangered words

By Kelly Burke, Education Reporter
July 30, 2004
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/29/1091080381836.html?oneclick=true#

[photo insert - Hear us out ... students at Darlington Public School
with a banner created by them and used in the teaching of the
endangered Wiradjuri language. Photo: Tamara Dean]

It's little lunch at Darlington Public School, and between mouthfuls of
bread and peanut butter Mikaela Welsh is trying out her newly acquired
skills in the Wiradjuri language.

"Nyan," she says, pointing to her shy, sticky grin. "Nyan - that's
mouth."

Although her Dhan-gadi family hail from the opposite end of the state to
where the Wiradjuri language is spoken, Mikaela - as much as any
seven-year-old is capable of seeing the bigger picture - knows she is
contributing to the revitalisation a crucial part of Aboriginal culture
under threat of extinction.

Her classmate, Ji Duncan-Weatherby, whose mother comes from the
Kamilaroi language group in central NSW, shares the passion, along with
fellow year 1 and 2 students Jonathon Sandstrom, Mali Sinclair and
Nericia Brown, whose family origins lie in Lebanon, Fiji and China
respectively.

It is two years since the NSW office of the Board of Studies admitted
there was not a single child in the state who could competently speak
one of more than 60 indigenous languages.

Now, Darlington Public, in the inner Sydney suburb of Chippendale, where
a quarter of the students are Aboriginal, is part of a changing tide,
precipitated by this country's first indigenous languages policy.
Advertisement Advertisement

Today, the NSW Education Minister, Andrew Refshauge, will launch the
cornerstone of that policy - a new Aboriginal language syllabus for
kindergarten to year 10, expected to be adopted by about 80 schools
across the state from the beginning of next year.

Dr Refshauge said the new syllabus would establish NSW as Australia's
leader in Aboriginal languages education. It would help to revitalise
existing languages and provide a blueprint for recreating lost
languages such as Sydney's local Eora, which has fewer than 200
surviving words.

"We know that language is at the heart of Aboriginal culture and
identity - revitalising languages is therefore critical to ensuring
Aboriginal cultural identity is strong," he said.

The Department of Education will also be looking to the new syllabus to
help lift the state's indigenous school participation rate. Nationally,
only 38 per cent of Aboriginal students finish year 12, half the
national rate of 77 per cent.

A review of NSW's Aboriginal education policy and practice is expected
to be handed to the minister next month.

Today's launch of the syllabus coincides with a meeting between the
University of Sydney and the Federation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Languages, to work out a proposal for an institute of
Aboriginal languages.