Arwarbukarl - Miromaa - WIN NATIONAL IT AWARD - Media Release (fwd)

Thu May 29 23:13:21 UTC 2008

Australia
Media Release

A non-profit Aboriginal Organisation based in Newcastle, NSW has taken out a top
award at the recent Australian Community Information and Communications
Technology (ICT) Awards held in Brisbane. Arwarbukarl Cultural Resource
Association Incorporated (ACRA) were joint winners for the category “Best use
of Software in nonprofit settings” for their development and distribution of
the “Miromaa” software program.

There were once over 10,000 traditional languages in the world. Today, every two
weeks one of those languages is lost and Australia is most at risk of losing its
traditional languages (estimated to have been between 250 and 500). Linguists
and community leaders around the world are struggling to stem this loss. It is
through the use of technology that Indigenous people globally are now
attempting to access tools to capture, preserve and promote traditional
languages.

Daryn McKenny an Aboriginal man from the Newcastle area and Manager of ACRA, is
the person behind the development of Miromaa. Daryn says “It’s through
technology that we can empower ourselves to be hands-on with work that was in
the past carried out only by trained academics and linguists. Until recently
all of the computer programs available for language recording have been aimed
at the academics, and my goal with Miromaa has been to create a tool that our
community members can easily understand and put into use.”

Over the last 4 years ACRA have been developing Miromaa to assist in the
reclamation, revitalisation and preservation of the traditional Aboriginal
languages of Australia. The main aim of the computer program is to be a user
friendly interface for Aboriginal people to use technology in all aspects of
language maintenance -from entering textual evidence of language through to the
rich multimedia products of video, audio and images, and even producing word
lists and dictionaries. Miromaa is able to assist in all aspects of the unique
– an urgent task which Aboriginal people from all over Australia are embarking
on.

Mckenny goes on to say “Like many of our people we like a challenge. Miromaa is
what happened when we faced this challenge. I’m really happy that it’s now
helping our people in all states of Australia to get involved once again and
work towards speaking our languages. Our languages hold our culture and the
knowledge of this country. They tell who we are and where we are from. Many say
that language is our soul. Our work is creating a happy marriage of the world’s
oldest culture and the world’s newest culture, technology. We like to call
this, Modern Ways for Ancient Words”.

ACRA is funded under the Federal Governments Department of Environment, Water,
Heritage and the Arts and its Maintenance for Indigenous Language Records
grants scheme. In 2007 they were also recognised for their innovative training
methods in travelling to rural and remote areas of Australia, this training
which centred around up-skilling Aboriginal people in the latest technology was
supported by Microsoft Australia and their Corporate Citizenship program
“Unlimited Potential”. All of ACRA’s activities are aimed to deliver a product
which is user friendly and is backed up by the necessary training.

Media Contacts:

Arwarbukarl CRA - Daryn McKenny Ph 0428 963 363
CISA (Award Organisers) – Doug Jaquier Ph 08 8122 2752

Web http://www.cisa.asn.au/cgi-bin/wf.pl and
http://www.connectingup.org/conference/

About Arwarbukarl CRA

www.arwarbukarl.com.au

About Miromaa

http://www.arwarbukarl.com.au/default.aspx?id=153

Further Information

The other joint winner was Support Link Australia, for a web based application
that enhances early intervention outcomes for vulnerable individuals and
families.
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