Page 4723 - Week 13 - Thursday, 28 November 2019
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I would like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, the traditional custodians of the land we are meeting on, and pay my respects to elders, past, present and emerging, and particularly to acknowledge those who are here in the chamber with us today and other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are joining us, including the chair and other members of the elected body.
I also extend my thanks to Veronica, in Minister Rattenbury’s office, for the work that has been done on this motion. I acknowledge that the Greens have indeed led on this motion. It is very pleasing to see that it is now being delivered in the spirit of tripartisanship, with the Assembly coming together as a whole to support this very important move.
This year is the International Year of Indigenous Languages, which aims to raise awareness of the consequences of the endangerment of Indigenous languages across the world. Around 120 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are still spoken in Australia, but that is less than half of the estimated 250 languages thought to have been in use across the country at the time of colonisation.
Too many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages have been lost. This devastating outcome of colonisation is due to decades of past government policies and practices that banned Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from speaking their language. Those taken to reserves or missions lost their language due to racist policies and practices of past governments and institutions.
Caroline Hughes spoke eloquently this morning on the radio, as she so often does, about the impact of this loss of language on members of the stolen generation and on those who have come after. The stolen generation were taken from family and country. They were not allowed to speak their language and, upon returning to their country and to their families, they were unable to communicate with them in their own language. They could not speak the language of their parents, their grandparents and their community. This had a devastating impact on the sense of identity and culture. For the languages that are still spoken, many of them will continue to be under threat if there is an insufficient number of speakers and insufficient resources to sustain them into the future.
Here in the ACT the Ngunnawal people are the proud holders of a vibrant and dynamic culture with its own traditions, law and, of course, language. It is very important for me to recognise the work that members of the Ngunnawal community have done in recent years, which has really gathered momentum in recent months to revitalise their language. I had the privilege of dropping in briefly to the recent Ngunnawal language workshop earlier this month and the room was full of enthusiasm, from elders and from younger people. It has been particularly pleasing to hear about elders learning the language that was denied to them in their youth, rediscovering that critical, important part of their culture, sharing that with one another, and finding the confidence to share it with the broader community. The change in that, just within the past two or three years, has been quite astonishing and moving for all of us and, I know, also for those elders.
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