Lessons learnt in 2005
Positive approaches to working with linguists
Linguists can start by acknowledging Aboriginal people’s ownership or custodianship of their language.
Jutta Besold, Linguist, 23/11/05This video requires QuickTime to be installed.
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Acknowledgement and respect for Aboriginal people’s knowledge of their language is essential.
This video requires QuickTime to be installed.
Download and install the latest version of QuickTime.'[We picked it up really quickly] and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of it we know, you know a lot of it was part of our everyday life. Around non-Aboriginal people they may not have ever seen that, but in our own family at home we use it all the time and I think that’s what’s helped.
'Like Jutta might tell us something that’s she’s found and we’ll all look at each other like, "Well that’s not we learnt, you know, we learnt it differently to that". It’s like the thing with the "mabura" and the "nabura". All of our life growing up our mother told us your eyes are your "nabura", you know she used to say to me all the time, "You’ve got blunt nabura", meaning I was blind. And then we came across the documentation that it’s actually written down as "mabura". Well I’ve grown up all of my life thinking it was "nabura" because that’s what Mum said. So when we teach that lesson to the children in the classroom we tell them that it’s acceptable to have either because the language changes over time, it evolves and that it’s OK if your mum said "mabura".'
Kerry Boyenga, Classroom and Dhurga Teacher, Broulee Public School, 23/11/05
It is important to acknowledge and respect a linguist’s knowledge and recognise that it can contribute to language reclamation.
'I see Jutta’s involvement as being a really integral part of this program because without the knowledge that Jutta has we don’t have a program and we don’t have the time to go looking for the information that Jutta gives us.'
Waine Donovan, Classroom and Dhurga Teacher, Broulee Public School, 23/11/05
'And Aunty Marg actually said to us, "So, you have to learn the language first?" And we said, "Well some of the language we already knew because we grew up using it". But we said, you know, Jutta’s been invaluable in that sense, because of the stuff that’s already been documented we have enough language to start with to get us going. We said we know we haven’t got it all and we know that we might do things wrong but I think we’ve been honest from the word go that we could make mistakes but again you know they’re honest mistakes, they’re not done intentionally.'
Waine Donovan, Classroom and Dhurga Teacher, Broulee Public School, 23/11/05
'All the different projects have a different amount of language available. I mean if you look at Gamilaraay and Wiradjuri there’s so much work done on the languages and they've got quite a good corpus to work from, [that’s] data that’s available. They’ve done published dictionaries, they’ve got language teaching material, they’ve got grammars published. Our situation is totally different, at this stage, well with me doing the PhD at the same time as we’re doing the language project, so what we’re really doing is: I’m extracting things as we need them at this stage. So, for example, we have our little meetings, we get together when we talk about what we should teach. I have a fair idea in the back on my mind what I’ve got, as in regards of what sort of items I have in my dictionary because I’ve been doing data entry all year. So I then extract whatever I can out of what I’ve got available, and that which has had grammatical features confirmed.'
Jutta Besold, Linguist, 23/11/05
'I’m working with archival material, so for me I spend a lot of time in libraries looking at 100-year-old manuscripts and I put it all together. It’s a lot of work, lots of interpretive work that needs to happen to get all the language material for here.'
Jutta Besold, Linguist, 23/11/05
Appreciate each other and work as a team.
'I think the part that makes it so exciting to work on this project, because it's a learning process for all of us, you know for the students, for the teachers and for me as a linguist.'
Jutta Besold, Linguist, 23/11/05
'We wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing without her, absolutely. What she’s doing in wonderful.'
Kerry Boyenga, Classroom and Dhurga Teacher, Broulee Public School, 23/11/05
'And the good thing about it is that she’s been honest with us from the word go, saying we can make mistakes and when we make mistakes we can fix them and that gives us comfort.'
Waine Donovan, Classroom and Dhurga Teacher, Broulee Public School, 23/11/05
'If we didn’t trust her it wouldn’t be working like it is. There has to be trust. We have to have a relationship with her, which we do. Luckily we all get on. So you’ve got to have trust and you’ve got to have a friendship or a relationship.'
Kerry Boyenga, Classroom and Dhurga Teacher, Broulee Public School, 23/11/05