Ever-widening Circles: consolidating and enhancing Wirlomin Noongar archival material in the community
Returning archival documentation of endangered Indigenous languages to their community of origin can provide empowering opportunities for Indigenous people to control, consolidate, enhance, and share their cultural heritage with ever-widening, concentric circles of people, while also allowing tim...
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| Format: | Book Chapter |
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Sydney University Press
2020
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| Online Access: | https://sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/ http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/79390 |
| Summary: | Returning archival documentation of endangered Indigenous languages to their community
of origin can provide empowering opportunities for Indigenous people to control, consolidate,
enhance, and share their cultural heritage with ever-widening, concentric circles of people, while
also allowing time and space for communities to recover from disempowerment and dislocation.
This process aligns with an affirming narrative of Indigenous persistence that, despite the context
of colonial dispossession, can lead to a positive, self-determined future. In 2007, senior Noongar of
the Wirlomin clan in the south coast region of Western Australia initiated Wirlomin Noongar
Language and Stories Inc., an organisation set up to facilitate cultural and linguistic revitalisation
by combining community-held knowledge with documentation and recordings repatriated from
the archives. Fieldnotes created in 1931 from discussions with local Aboriginal people at Albany,
Western Australia have inspired the collaborative production of six illustrated bilingual books.
Working with archival research material has presented challenges due to issues of orthography and
legibility in written records, the poor quality of audio recordings, and the incomplete documentation
of elicitation sessions. As the archive is so fragmentary, community knowledge is vital in making
sense of its contents. |
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