Languages under attack (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Languages under attack

* Jo Prichard
* May 28, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21804401-601,00.html

FOR Nyoongar elder Ken Colbung, the 1967 referendum has brought mixed
blessings.

"We have more than what a lot of people have got ... We have got the freedom
to make a decision," he said while opening an exhibition at the Western
Australian Museum in Perth yesterday.

"But we won't move forward if there are people that baulk us all the time.

"Yes, we are taking our place with the rest of the people and we are being
considered, but our own traditional culture is not."

Mr Colbung, 75, said calls by the federal Government to force Aboriginal
children to learn English brought back memories of his childhood at the
Moore River settlement, north of Perth, a mission made famous by the movie
Rabbit-Proof Fence. Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough last week said
learning English would ease poverty in remote communities.

"In Moore River we weren't allowed to speak the language at all," Mr Colbung
said.

"If you did you were kept in the boob, a little white sort of prison shack.
Today they're still giving no consideration to our traditional languages
and the preservation of that. Many of us still feel we have to hide our
culture."

WA Museum chief executive Dawn Casey, whose emphasis of indigenous history
at the National Museum of Australia got her offside with board members in
2002, yesterday said language was central to Aboriginal prosperity.

"You can't simply say all of a sudden you have to be white ... There's a
huge responsibility in terms of traditional Aboriginal people who have to
pass on their language," she said.

"There has to be responsibility on both sides but in my view there's been
too much emphasis on it being the responsibility of Aboriginal people ...
as if they haven't lived up to their responsibility."

Ms Casey attracted controversy five years ago, when as museum director she
chose to depict 1967 federal Opposition leader Gough Whitlam, not then
prime minister Harold Holt, as taking a lead political role in garnering
support for the referendum.

"We had Gough Whitlam with the Yes vote and that's factually correct ...
that he was the only one (in politics) who was seen to be pursuing (it),"
Ms Casey said yesterday.

Ms Casey said some aspects of Aboriginal life had deteriorated since 1967.
"What's become worse has been a reflection and a stereotyping of people
that you've never seen before, and all the wrongs and ills are being
reflected back on Aboriginal people," she said.