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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