<h1 class="entry-title grid-eight instapaper_title">
Slip of the tongues: language and the unintended consequences of Indigenous policy
</h1>
<div class="entry-summary" style="text-indent:100%;white-space:nowrap;overflow:hidden">
<p>Indigenous communities are devastated when languages are lost.
This was the conclusion of the House of Representatives Standing
Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs last month.
The committee members also found that Indigenous language plays a
crucial role in people’s relationships…</p>
</div>
<h4>Author</h4>
<ol class="semantic"><li class="hcard author-avatar large" id="author-10171">
<a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/profiles/10171" rel="author">
<img alt="Nicholas Biddle" src="https://c479107.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/avatars/10171/thumb54/sssh7gbp-1339645470.jpg" height="54" width="54">
<h3 class="fn">
Nicholas Biddle
</h3>
<p>
<span class="role">Fellow at Australian National University</span>
</p>
</a>
</li></ol>
<h4>Disclosure Statement</h4>
<p>Nicholas Biddle receives funding from the Commonwealth Department of FaHCSIA.</p>
<p>
The Conversation provides independent analysis and commentary from academics
and researchers.
</p>
<p>
<strong>We are funded by</strong> CSIRO, Melbourne, Monash, RMIT, UTS, UWA,
Canberra, CDU, Deakin, Flinders, Griffith, La Trobe, Murdoch, QUT, Swinburne,
UniSA, UTAS, UWS and VU.
</p>
<h4>Articles by This Author</h4>
<a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/northern-territory-intervention-extended-but-is-it-working-8005">
3 July 2012
Northern Territory Intervention extended … but is it working?
</a>
<a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/australian-census-not-quite-the-us-but-income-gap-widens-7676">
2 July 2012
Australian census: not quite the US, but income gap widens
</a>
<a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/australian-census-indigenous-australia-improves-but-closing-the-gap-is-a-long-way-off-7678">
21 June 2012
Australian Census: Indigenous Australia improves, but closing the gap is a long way off
</a>
<img alt="T7p9prm9-1349157859" src="https://c479107.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/16080/width668/t7p9prm9-1349157859.jpg">
Government policy affects which languages flourish, and which languages die out.
<span class="source" title="Source">iambents</span>
<p>Indigenous communities are devastated when languages are lost.</p>
<p>This was the conclusion of the House of Representatives Standing
Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs last month.
The committee members also found that Indigenous language plays a
crucial role in people’s relationships with family, country, kin and
culture.</p>
<p>This fits with analysis I <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00049182.2012.706201">recently co-authored</a>
showing Indigenous Australians who were learning an Indigenous language
were significantly more likely to report that they were happy all or
most of the time in the previous four weeks compared to those who were
not.</p>
<h2>Who’s learning Indigenous languages?</h2>
<p>Recent census data can tell us much about Indigenous language usage
in Australia. But as with much analysis of Indigenous outcomes,
demographic and population processes confuse the story on the
maintenance of Indigenous languages.</p>
<p>On the one hand, the analysis that I have carried out on <a href="http://caepr.anu.edu.au/population/indigenousoutcomes.php">census data</a>
showed an increase in the number of Indigenous Australians who spoke an
Indigenous language at home from 51,990 counted in 2006 to 60,550 in
2011. There were 16.5% more people in 2011 who identified as being
Indigenous and speaking an Indigenous language compared to 2006.</p>
<p>But on the other hand, as the number of people identified as being
Indigenous also increased, there was in fact a small decline in the
percentage of the relevant population speaking an Indigenous language —
from 12.1% to 11.6%.</p>
<p>Of those classified languages with at least 100 Indigenous speakers
in 2006, the biggest increase was among those who reported that they
spoke “Aboriginal English”. There were 1,037 speakers in 2011 compared
to 471 in 2006 — a 120% increase over the period.</p>
<p>There were, however, also a number of specific languages that
increased substantially over the period. This includes Nunggubuyu (114%
increase), Manyjilyjarra (107%), Kunwinjku (80%) and Ngarrindjeri (71%).
Some of these languages have been a focus of considerable government
investment and, although it is difficult to establish causality with
data in the census, it would appear that this investment may be paying
dividends.</p>
<h2>The geography of government policy</h2>
<p>Not surprisingly, there was considerable variation in Indigenous
language usage across the country. More than half of all Indigenous
language speakers (34,086 people counted in the census) live in the
Northern Territory. This represents about 64.7% of the NT’s Indigenous
population. At the other end of the spectrum, 2% or less of the
population in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT speak an
Indigenous language at home.</p>
<p>Some of this geographical variation is due to specific historic
government policies. However, demography is also likely to be playing a
large part. In order for a language to be maintained and strengthened,
it needs speakers. These speakers ideally should be in relatively close
proximity to one another. While it is not possible to identify causal
relationships with cross-sectional data, the following figure shows a
strong association between the proportion of an area’s total population
that identifies as being Indigenous and the proportion of the Indigenous
population who speak an Indigenous language at home.</p>
<a href="https://c479107.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/16079/area14mp/kxgrnt9w-1349156831.jpg"><img src="https://c479107.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/16079/width668/kxgrnt9w-1349156831.jpg"></a>
Indigenous language usage by Indigenous share of the Indigenous Area, 2011. <span class="source">Nicholas Biddle</span><div class="enlarge_hint">Click to enlarge</div>
<p>The results presented in the above figure clearly demonstrate a
relationship between Indigenous language usage in an area and the
percentage of the population in that area that identify as being
Indigenous.</p>
<p>There are some outliers. For example, in the areas of Cherbourg and
Palm Island (both in Queensland), more than 95% of the population
identify as being Indigenous, despite there being very few Indigenous
language speakers. This clearly reflects past government policy in these
(and other) areas with many Indigenous people being actively
discouraged, and at times prohibited, from speaking their own language.
Nonetheless, there is considerable overlap between language usage and
the Indigenous share of the area.</p>
<h2>The language of loss</h2>
<p>The map highlights a potential tension in current government policy.
In 2006, the average Indigenous Australian lived in an area where 18.8%
of the total population identified as being Indigenous. By 2011, this
had declined to 16.4%.</p>
<p>Demographically, there is less of an opportunity for Indigenous
Australians to speak an Indigenous language with others in their area in
2011 compared to 2006, and a greater incentive to speak English only.</p>
<p>Not all of this increasing Indigenous urbanisation is driven by
government policy. However, a focus on “closing the gap” in
socioeconomic outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
Australians, as well as an increasing concentration of services in
certain areas will probably encourage Indigenous Australians to move
from remote to less remote areas.</p>
<p>Put simply, demographic trends, potentially exacerbated by certain
government policies, are making it much more difficult for governments
and the Indigenous community to maintain Indigenous languages in
Australia.</p>
<p>It is not surprising, therefore, that the first recommendation of the standing committee’s report was that:</p>
<blockquote><p>Commonwealth Government include in the Closing the Gap
framework acknowledgement of the fundamental role and importance of
Indigenous languages in preserving heritage and improving outcomes for
Indigenous peoples.</p></blockquote>
<p>While this acknowledgement would be useful, it won’t solve the
fundamental dilemma at the heart of Indigenous policy in Australia – how
to improve the health, education and employment prospects of Indigenous
Australians without sacrificing the enduring differences in language
and culture valued by Indigenous Australians and the majority of the
rest of the population.</p><p><a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/slip-of-the-tongues-language-and-the-unintended-consequences-of-indigenous-policy-9937">http://theconversation.edu.au/slip-of-the-tongues-language-and-the-unintended-consequences-of-indigenous-policy-9937</a><br>
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