A generous gift in a Will is helping prevent the irreplaceable loss of culture, identity and scientific knowledge that comes with the disappearance of language
Professor Rachel Nordlinger has crisscrossed the country as part of her mission to help Aboriginal communities preserve their languages. With the help of the elders who were its last fluent speakers, she created the only dictionary of the Wambaya language that for thousands of years has been spoken throughout the Barkly Tablelands region of the Northern Territory.
“For them, to hold this book, which was 350 pages long and represented their knowledge, was really powerful and emotional,” says Professor Nordlinger.
I think it must be incredibly lonely to be one of the last speakers of your language and to feel that weight of responsibility – that you’re carrying 30,000 years of heritage and it could go with you.
Professor Nordlinger and her team at the University’s Research Unit for Indigenous Language (RUIL) want to help lift that weight. They are working to support, maintain and learn from more than 100 Aboriginal languages still being spoken in communities across Australia.
“Language is really closely connected to people’s sense of identity, community and history, so there’s a very emotional element to language being lost,” she says.
Her team also believes that the cultural, historical and scientific knowledge contained within Aboriginal languages is irreplaceable.
“Knowledge, like histories, songs and ceremonies, is often tied up in a particular language,” she continues. “If the community stops speaking the language and switches to English, they don’t translate all of the stories and songs and ceremonies.”
The Unit will now be able to continue this work in perpetuity, thanks to a generous gift from the estate of a man who also understood the power and value of language.
The late Duncan Leary graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts. He met his life partner, chef Ernest Lanz, in Geneva, Switzerland, before the couple returned permanently to Melbourne in the 1960s.
A man of tremendous erudition, Duncan maintained a strong association with the University for the rest of his life, studying many subjects through Melbourne’s continuing education program, including a number in the fields of Aboriginal history and culture.
Though we know little about his connection to Indigenous languages, it is clear that Duncan was a passionate linguist, speaking five languages in addition to English. His bequest is one of the largest ever given to the study of Indigenous languages.
“It really is an extraordinary gift,” says Professor Nordlinger. “It will really enable us to make a significant difference to the work we are already doing.”
Aside from their cultural and historical significance, Professor Nordlinger says languages contain centuries of scientific knowledge of use to researchers in a range of fields. Speakers of the Wambaya language, for example, gave her words for native trees that had not been identified by non-Indigenous botanists.
There’s a lot of knowledge about the environment and the flora and fauna of the country where people live that’s all tied up in the language.
Professor Nordlinger says the study of Indigenous Australian languages can also help researchers learn more about how language develops in the brain.
“Most of the research around the world about how languages are learned comes from children learning English or German or French,” she adds. “We then assume that kids all learn language in the same way.
“But it can work very differently when children are learning different languages, such as Aboriginal languages. That’s important for us to know because it tells us something about how the brain works.”
Professor Nordlinger says she hopes to use some of the gift to increase the number of Indigenous people working with the University’s linguistics program, and to increase the public’s awareness of the importance of Aboriginal languages.
“I don’t think Australians really understand what a sort of treasure they are,” she says. “They are so important to Indigenous people; it’s really a very positive way we can engage with Indigenous communities.”