This story comes from the wise and ancient language of the First People of the Western Australian south coast. A boy goes looking for his uncle. He discovers family and home at the ocean's edge, and finds himself as well. Ngaawily Nop is a story of country and family and belonging. (Series: Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project, Vol. 5) [Subject: Aboriginal Studies, Anthropology, Australian Studies, Art Studies, Linguistics, Noongar Language Studies]
This story comes from the wise and ancient language of the First People of the Western Australian south coast. Noorn is a story of alliances between humans and other living creatures, in this case a snake. It tells of how protective relationships can be nurtured by care and respect. (Series: Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project, Vol. 6) [Subject: Aboriginal Studies, Anthropology, Australian Studies, Fiction, Noongar Language, Art]
The incredible story of the resilience and recovery of Australia's First Nations languages Australia's language diversity is truly breathtaking. This continent lays claim to the world's longest continuous collection of cultures, including over 440 unique languages and many more dialects. Sadly, European invasion has had severe consequences for the vitality of these languages. Amid devastating loss, there has also been the birth of new languages such as Kriol and Yumplatok, both English-based Creoles. Aboriginal English dialects are spoken widely, and recently there has been an inspiring renaissance of First Nations languages, as communities reclaim and renew them. Bina: First Nations Languages Old and New tells this story, from the earliest exchange of words between colonists and First Nations people to today's reclamations. It is a creative and exciting introduction to a vital and dynamic world of language. 'Years in the making, Bina offers a multidimensional reflection on how many diverse languages across this continent continue to vibrate in rich and profound ways. The emergence of Indigenous linguists Gari Tudor-Smith and Paul Williams as authors of this survey alongside Felicity Meakins signals an important and welcome shift in the Australian linguistics landscape.' —Professor Clint Bracknell, University of Western Australia, Nyungar musicologist and musician
Everywhen is a groundbreaking collection about diverse ways of conceiving, knowing, and narrating time and deep history. Looking beyond the linear documentary past of Western or academic history, this collection asks how knowledge systems of Australia's Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders can broaden our understandings of the past and of historical practice. Indigenous embodied practices for knowing, narrating, and reenacting the past in the present blur the distinctions of linear time, making all history now. Ultimately, questions of time and language are questions of Indigenous sovereignty. The Australian case is especially pertinent because Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are among the few Native peoples without a treaty with their colonizers. Appreciating First Nations' time concepts embedded in languages and practices, as Everywhen does, is a route to recognizing diverse forms of Indigenous sovereignties. Everywhen makes three major contributions. The first is a concentration on language, both as a means of knowing and transmitting the past across generations and as a vital, albeit long-overlooked source material for historical investigation, to reveal how many Native people maintained and continue to maintain ancient traditions and identities through language. Everywhen also considers Indigenous practices of history, or knowing the past, that stretch back more than sixty thousand years; these Indigenous epistemologies might indeed challenge those of the academy. Finally, the volume explores ways of conceiving time across disciplinary boundaries and across cultures, revealing how the experience of time itself is mediated by embodied practices and disciplinary norms. Everywhen brings Indigenous knowledges to bear on the study and meaning of the past and of history itself. It seeks to draw attention to every when, arguing that Native time concepts and practices are vital to understanding Native histories and, further, that they may offer a new framework for history as practiced in the Western academy.
This book explores the experiences of Indigenous Australians who participated in Australian exploration enterprises in the early nineteenth century. These Indigenous travellers, often referred to as ‘guide’s’, ‘native aides’, or ‘intermediaries’ have already been cast in a variety of ways by historians: earlier historiographies represented them as passive side-players in European heroic efforts of Discovery, while scholarship in the 1980s, led by Henry Reynolds, re-cast these individuals as ‘black pioneers’. Historians now acknowledge that Aborigines ‘provided information about the customs and languages of contiguous tribes, and acted as diplomats and couriers arranging in advance for the safe passage of European parties’. More recently, Indigenous scholars Keith Vincent Smith and Lynnette Russell describe such Aboriginal travellers as being entrepreneurial ‘agents of their own destiny’. While historiography has made up some ground in this area Aboriginal motivations in exploring parties, while difficult to discern, are often obscured or ignored under the title ‘guide’ or ‘intermediary’. Despite the different ways in which they have been cast, the mobility of these travellers, their motivations for travel and experience of it have not been thoroughly analysed. Some recent studies have begun to open up this narrative, revealing instead the ways in which colonisation enabled and encouraged entrepreneurial mobility, bringing about ‘new patterns of mobility for colonised peoples’.
The lead-up to the 2017 Western Australian state election saw a large and lively protest over the construction of stage 8 of the Roe Highway (Roe 8) and the Perth Freight Link. Years of opposition to Roe 8 culminated in civil disobedience, mass arrests, and media theatrics as the bulldozers tore across Aboriginal heritage sites and through much-loved bushland and wetland just weeks out from an election the government appeared likely to lose. When Labor was swept to power in the biggest landslide victory ever delivered by Western Australian voters, the Roe 8 contracts were cancelled. However, the planning systems that enabled Roe 8 and the Perth Freight Link remain in place and in need of reform. This book illuminates what was at stake in the conflict for Perth residents, Aboriginal heritage, and the environment. It traces the history of Roe 8 and the Perth Freight Link to show what needs to be done in order to ensure that Western Australian people and environments never again have such a damaging project thrust upon them. It surveys the issues and makes recommendations across transport, planning, environment, health, and Aboriginal heritage policy areas. It also captures the nature of the diverse and vigorous resistance to the project, setting the struggle and its bittersweet victory in a wider context. [Subject: Environmental Studies, Australian Studies, Aboriginal Studies]
Dancing in Shadows explores the power of Indigenous performance pitted against the forces of settler colonisation. Historian Anna Haebich documents how the Nyungar people of Western Australia strategically and courageously adapted their rich performance culture to survive the catastrophe that engulfed them, and continue to generously share their culture, history, and language in theatre. In public corroborees, they performed their sovereignty to the colonists, and in community-only gatherings they danced and sang to bring forth resilience and spiritual healing. Pushed away by the colonists and denied their culture and lands, they continued to live and perform in the shadows over the years in combinations of the old and the new, including indigenised settler songs and dances. Nyungar people survived, and they now number around 40,000 people and constitute the largest Aboriginal nation in the Australian settler state. The ancient family lineages live in city suburbs and country towns, and they continue to perform to celebrate their ancestors and to strengthen community well-being by being together. Dancing in Shadows sheds light on the little-known history of Nyungar performance. [Subject: Theatre Studies, Sociology, History, Australian History, Aboriginal Studies]
A heartwarming picture book from award-winning author-illustrator Caroline Magerl about two unlikely loners who forge a forever friendship. Nop is a scruffy kind of bear. He sits on a dusty armchair in Oddmint's Dumporeum surrounded and ignored by the other heaping heaps of goods. At night, they are magically transformed by the beaders, knitters, patchers and stitchers and the next day go on to 'someplace wonderful'. Nop watches the heap tumble until, armed with a new bow tie, he has an idea that will change his life forever. A tale about finding the magic that lives inside even the scruffiest of bears.
The Gathang people of the New South Wales mid-north coast are reviving their language and culture and passing it on to their children. Gathang (or Kattang) is a general name for the language also known as Birrbay (Biripi), Guringay (Gringai) and Warrimay (Worimi), technically these are dialects of the same language.
Noongar Mambara Bakitj was created as part of an Indigenous language recovery project led by Kim Scott and the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project.
