First Nation Pertame families learn language revival strategies from Native Americans in Alice Springs

ABC NEWS (Australia)

In Alice Springs more than 45 Aboriginal language groups have come together to learn from a Native American immersion method that they say is proven to revive endangered languages.

Transcript

00:01A Native American song sung in the Salish language by three generations of the same family.

00:08They've traveled from the northwest of the U.S. to the desert heart of Mubantua, Alice Springs,

00:14to share a powerful tool for language revival.

00:17I felt like I had something missing.

00:19When I heard the language and started learning the language,

00:23it felt like my heart became whole again.

00:27Leray Wiley is the executive director of the Salish School of Spokane,

00:32where this method, the fluency transfer system, has been developed and tested.

00:37It teaches entirely in language, without English,

00:40and it's helped rebuild a fluent Salish-speaking community from scratch,

00:45including children, parents and grandparents.

00:48We built this tool so that we could become fluent speakers of language

00:52and also leave a trail for others to follow.

00:54When you really are grounded in your culture and you really know who you are,

00:58it allows you to go out into the world in a different way.

01:01Now the method is being adapted for Purim,

01:04a critically endangered Australian Indigenous language

01:07with only 20 fluent speakers remaining.

01:10We can't afford to be doing methods that don't work or are ineffective.

01:15We have to be doing what is proven to work at creating new fluent speakers.

01:19Vanessa Farrelly is leading the Purim Language Nest,

01:22a preschool-like program that hopes to raise the next generation of speakers.

01:27She says this method is nothing short of a lifeline.

01:31We've seen the Salish be able to, yeah,

01:33train new fluent speakers in just over a year.

01:36Ms Farrelly says her babies and toddlers at the Language Nest

01:39will be the first new generation of Purim speakers in over 50 years.

01:49This is the second time I Borim with a girl who was the käytt還是 community.

01:54This is how she can maintain the most of the dogs and the birds.

01:56And she can't abbast a lot of the animals and all of the animals and all of the animals and all the animals in the country.

01:58And she doesn't absorb the most of the animals in the country

02:00and she does not absorb the most of the animals in the world.

02:01So is it doing important in being able to give a nice national elephant example?

02:02But it creates a lot of time in the nature of the animals and opportunities.

02:03And as a child is a child, that gives a lot of time,

02:05it's about to do the same thing as it doesn't

02:05that makes a very soon, that has to be seen in the country.

02:09In the future I am not seeing the people of the Montal Annette

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