Language experts gather at PULiiMA Conference in Darwin

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Australia's leading Indigenous languages conference PULiiMA is underway in Darwin.   The event brings together linguists and language custodians from across the country and around the world, all driving efforts to keep First Nations languages alive.

Transcript

00:00The theme for this year's Pulima Language Conference is Echoes of the Past, Voices of the Future,

00:09which is all about how we can utilise innovation and technology to keep critically endangered

00:14Indigenous languages alive and spoken.

00:17And that's both here in Australia and across the world.

00:20We've got people coming from as far as Helsinki, Ecuador, Peru, as well as, of course, from

00:26our hundreds of Indigenous communities around Australia.

00:30And so with the focus on how we can utilise innovation and technology, we're looking at

00:35everything from songs, poetry, digital gaming, and how we can utilise the classroom for our

00:41young people, as well as our community language centres all around the country.

00:45And so with that focus in mind, efforts are at the forefront here of helping to support

00:51some 123 languages, which continue to be spoken here in Australia.

00:56But of those, 109 are actually considered critically endangered.

01:02So, for instance, we also have the Pinakura language, of which only some 250 words have

01:08been collected and recorded.

01:10And that's a language from WA's Pilbara community.

01:13So that just gives you a sense of just how desperate some of this work is.

01:17But we've got people who are doing all kinds of interesting things to see that work being

01:23continued on.

01:24And so for today's program, we have keynote speakers who are coming to us from the central

01:30desert region of Australia and also Canada's Commissioner for Indigenous Languages, who was

01:36telling us about the work that's going on in Canada, where programs have been up and running

01:42since the passage of the Indigenous Languages Act back in 2019.

01:47From there, we've got more than 30 breakout sessions happening right across the day.

01:51And of course, there are two more days to come here at Garamila, Darwin, on Larrakia Country.

01:58So that is a lot of conversations in a lot of languages.

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