Documenting ancient Indigenous languages

Under the direction of First Nations people, Professor Felicity Meakins is piecing together ancient Indigenous languages that have been at risk of being silenced since Australian colonisation began more than two hundred years ago.

In the last two decades, Professor Meakins has overseen the creation of four Indigenous dictionaries (Gurindji, Bilinarra, Ngarinyman and Mudburra), two grammars (Bilinarra and Gurindji), and two ethnobiologies (Bilinarra/Gurindji/Malngin and Jingulu/Mudburra).

In her role as Deputy Director of The University of Queensland’s node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, she has also led a world-first project that uses biological methods to model language change in Australia.

This means she has studied the way Australia has changed to discover how the use of English-only classrooms has affected the vitality of Indigenous languages.

“This is really disturbing and is an absolute plug for bilingual education for Indigenous communities,” Prof Meakins said.

“Prior to colonisation, there were 350 languages spoken right across Australia, with many different dialects.

“Since colonisation, there’s maybe around 40 languages still being spoken and maybe about 14 that are still being learnt by children.”

Under the guidance of First Nations people, Professor Meakins has led teams of Indigenous community members, students, postdoctoral researchers, Indigenous artists and rangers into the farthest reaches of Australia.

In the Southern Victoria River District, 900 kilometres southwest of Darwin, Professor Meakins and the team ventured into the heartland of the Gurindji people – where black soil plains meet vast river systems – to document their precious language.

The Gurindji people are perhaps most famous for the 1966 Wave Hill Walk-off, where hundreds of men and women walked from Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory in protest against poor working conditions.

The Gurindji people went on to become the first group to spearhead the land rights movement in Australia.

Professor Meakins said the Gurindji people have a philosophy of “bringing together white fellas and black fellas to work together for a common cause”.

“This is one of the reasons why I’ve done such extensive work with them,” Professor Meakins said.

“By now, we’ve created the largest documentation of any Australian language with Gurindji people and this is very important for their children’s future.”

Professor Meakins said there has been an inspiring galvanisation of First Nations communities in recent decades, particularly on the east coast, as people push to reconnect with their language.

During her research, Professor Meakins brought attention to incredible traits associated with First Nations cultures and languages – like the ability to speak using compass points.

The Gurindji, for example, use north, south, east and west, instead of left or right for positioning objects and space.

“This attention to geocentric cues has cognitive effects that really show that Gurindji people have an amazing mental map of the world,” Professor Meakins said.

“So they might say 'place the sugar in the cupboard west of the flour', or 'there’s a fly to your north'.”

In the coming years, Professor Meakins hopes to discover if First Nations people have developed a 'sixth sense' through their rich connection with the earth.

“One of the next stages in this research is to see whether this attention to geocentric cues is reflected neurologically,” Professor Meakins said.

“We’re going to be working with Gurindji people to test this neurological status to see whether they have a conscious understanding of the earth’s geomagnetic field, which would essentially be a human sixth sense.”

Understanding the Gurindji’s process has also paved the way for the discovery of a modernised version of their language.

This is known as Gurindji Kriol.

Professor Meakins said the silencing of language in Australia is a “source of absolute grief for First Nations people”.

But Gurindji Kriol is a new language for a new generation, and the team has done a lot of work documenting the language using population genetics and models, bringing together biologists and mathematicians, to understand how this language has changed.

“By understanding how languages change, we can create pathways back to those languages,” Professor Meakins said.