Centuries ago, over 500 clans of Aboriginal Australians called this land home. Many of these clans, often referred to as nations, had languages as culturally valuable and unique as anything else they held important. It was a mark of identity, of belonging, held private, sacred, and with pride.
Today, these languages are threatening to slip away entirely, a long-term casualty of government policy that removed indigenous children en masse from their families in a cruel and misguided attempt to indoctrinate them into a Westernised lifestyle.
One of the nations shaken most profoundly during this period were the Noongar people, whose land stretches across south-west Western Australia, including the capital city of Perth. Even though the Noongar people are one of the largest indigenous groups in Australia today, totalling around 35,000 in all, they are aware that their language may very well be lost to time if something isn’t done to preserve it now. According to Sue Hanson, a Noongar Boodjar Language Centre linguist who talked with The Guardian, a shocking few of these people can actually hold conversations in the language.
In 2008, an Aboriginal languages policy was in development until it was scrapped due to the cost of implementation, and since then it has been up to the nations to find their own means (and funding) to ensure the future of their language.
Six years later, Noongar elder and University Western Australia indigenous studies professor Leonard Collard joined Curtin University’s John Hartley and Miles Franklin award-winning author Kim Scott to found the Noongarpedia Project, a Wikipedia incubator designed to safeguard the language and culture of people whose history can be traced back an incredible 30,000 years.
Though this isn’t the first time such an exclusive language has been included by Wikipedia – many Native American languages are represented by the service, as well as the likes of Fijian, Moldovan, and the South African Xhosa – the project has faced some extensive obstacles.
The first of which is that, like many Aboriginal languages, Noongar is predominantly oral. In fact, the written word is so new, that it is still being developed. This obviously makes the transition to a digital platform difficult, so English is often added to the pages to allow for easier interpretation.
The second challenge, and the most important when considering the context of the project, is ensuring the private elements of Noongar culture remain private on a service dedicated to freedom of information, without contributors worrying about having to self-censor or accidentally revealing secret information to those who should not be privy to it.
To overcome this, the project leads have been holding ‘Noongarpedia Wikibombs’, bringing together the community to write and edit articles as a team. They also discuss ideas, and how the language should be translated, as contemporary Noongar includes a range of English terms. Where the line should be drawn between tradition and the evolution of the language is left to the people themselves, and rightly so.
Hopefully, Noongarpedia sets a precedent for the conservation of all Aboriginal Australian languages. Ultimately, it’s important not just for anthropological reasons, but as a way in which respect and acknowledgement of indigenous culture can be restored.
Source: The Guardian
The Noongarpedia is live, but not yet officially launched.
You can visit it here.