History revisited - the destruction of language and how it can really survive

"The strength of any language is determined by its use in daily life"

This last column in my New England Aboriginal language series looks at the process of language destruction and partial revival.

The initial spread of European settlement in New England was quite slow. It took thirty six years for the edge of settlement to reach the Upper Hunter. However, the impact of colonisation spread well beyond the frontier.

The Aborigines had no natural resistance to the diseases that came with the Europeans. The smallpox epidemic of 1789-90 that began in Sydney spread across the North.

Then there was a smaller small pox outbreak in 1828, while other diseases such as venereal disease also spread beyond the frontier.

There is some dispute about the precise scale of impact, but what is clear is that entire groups were wiped out. In the face of catastrophe, previously separate groups were forced together in order to survive. The process of language destruction had begun.

Aboriginal society was given little time to regroup. From 1824, European settlement exploded, driven by the potential returns on wool, a high value product that could support high transport costs. Within thirty years, all of New England had been at least thinly settled.

In the face of progressive white settlement, Aborigines withdrew from some parts of traditional territory to other less settled areas. Aborigines from different groups came to work together in things such as pastoral work.

These processes merged languages. Then later relocations of Aborigines by the Aboriginal Protection Board created in 1888 forced people together from different language groups, so that English became a common language. Further, the use of Aboriginal languages was effectively discouraged as time passed.

The strength of any language is determined by its use in daily life. New England’s Aboriginal languages progressively retreated to vestigial use among older people. The languages seemed dead, although more had survived than most non-Aboriginals realised.

Interest revived in the 1950s and 1960s as part of a renewed interest in Australia’s Aboriginal peoples. Researchers began to pour over word lists, searching for previous records, recording current speakers.

From the second half of the 1980s, Aboriginal people moved to take control of their own languages. In 1986 the Muurbay Aboriginal Language and Culture cooperative was formed to revive and hand down the Gumbaynngir language. Similar revival moves took place in Kamilaroi lands and in the Lower Hunter with Awabakal.

The Roman Catholic Church played an important role in supporting language revival efforts. Steve Morelli, for example, worked with Gumbaynngir elders to run the first Gumnaynngir language course, while John Giacon played an active role in Gamilaraay-Yuwaalaray revival.

Their endeavours were supported by and drew from researchers in certain universities and especially the University of New England and Australian National University. The work of people like Bill Hoddinott, Peter Austin, Amnada Lissarough and Margaret Sharpe are examples.

These endeavours were not without controversy. Why bother, said some? Some Aboriginal people objected on the grounds that the languages were theirs, should not be shared. Other Aboriginal people objected that the new revived languages weren’t real, that they were wrong, not true.

To my mind, these criticisms are invalid. Modern Greek is not the same as Classical Greek, for example. The Aboriginal languages are part of our shared Australian past. Their revival adds to the rich texture of life that we all share.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 22 May 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013

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History revisited - geography contributes to language diversity

Last week I spoke of the way that Aboriginal society centred on family groups with their own way of speaking, of the way that that these local languages could be grouped in various ways from the local though dialects into broader language groups.

I mentioned, too, the confusion this could create in the minds of observers.

This point helps interpret the map of New England Aboriginal languages drawn from the 1994 Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia, to understand why there is dispute among Aboriginal groups, that boundaries were not precise lines on a map.

In general terms, language boundaries were linked in to river catchments because the boundaries between catchments often created a natural divide. Thus the Moonbi Range marked a clear divide between the Gamilaraay speakers of the Western Slopes and Plains and the Anaiwan or Nganjaywana speakers of the Southern Tablelands.

Why two names for the Anaiwan? There were many, but Anaiwan was the most commonly accepted spelling, But then linguist Terry Crowley coined the name Nganjaywana (ng+anaywana+a) as a more accurate language description. So we can think of Anaiwan as the people, Nganjaywana as the language.

The linkage between catchments and language was not exact. Major geographic regions were also important, since areas with similar environments were more likely to have commonalities in life and culture. This is true of New England.

On the west, Kamilaroi (Gamilaraay) was the largest language group by area. It merged with Wiradjuri to the south, Bigambul to the north. These languages occupied the river valleys flowing west from the Great Dividing Range. Expansion was facilitated by geography.

There is a dense distribution of languages along the coast and adjoining ranges. North-south, most language groups are directly related to catchments. One partial exception is the Clarence, the big river. Its size made it the divide between two very different language groups, Gumbainggir and Bandjalung. A third Gumbainggir related language, Yaygirr, occupied the areas around the mouth of the Clarence.

East-west, languages shade inland, with coastal and linked upper river languages. For example, Bainbaa, the language spoken in the headwaters of the Nymboida River, appears to be a version of Gumbainggir.

The two Tablelands’ language groups shown, Nganjaywana and Ngrarabal, are longer north-south than east-west, squeezed between Gamilaraay and multiple coastal languages; both show some general similarities to the coastal languages.

Nganjaywana is especially interesting, because the north- south shifts in dialect mirror to some degree the shifts in the coastal languages. Northern Anaiwan contains Gumbainggir elements, while southern Anaiwan displays Dianggati (Macleay Valley) influences.

Nganjaywana’s geographic position among so many language groups explains something that often puzzles people, the number of different Aboriginal groups in Armidale that have some historic connection to the Tablelands.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 15 May 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013

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History revisited - family's role in a language

My last column introduced you to Australia’s 250 or so Aboriginal languages and more  than 700 dialects. There I noted that all the languages spoken across the broader New England could be classified as Pama-Nyungan, the dominant language grouping over much of Australia.

In this column, I want to start digging down, focusing on the languages spoken across the broader New England. To do this, I need to tell you a little about Aboriginal life in New England before the disruptions that came with the First Fleet.

The family was the basic Aboriginal social unit. The family group might be quite small - 10 or less - but could also be a larger group or band of up to 50 or more people linked by kinship. In turn, the bands were linked to other groups in a variety of sometimes complex ways through kinship, language, ceremonies and cooperative activities.

Each family group occupied a defined territory or run.

In desert areas, family groups might be small and the runs large, in some cases up to 25,000 square kilometres. In more fertile areas, the bands could be much larger and the territories smaller. In some fertile places such as the North Coast, there were effectively villages occupied for more extended periods by some groups.

Each band had its own language and its own way of speaking. Groups could understand the language spoken by those around - the Aborigines were multilingual - but language differences increased with distance as interaction diminished.

This created a language hierarchy in which local languages with common features formed dialects and the dialects in turn formed broader language groups.

This is actually no different from the position in Europe, before the rise of the nation state and the process of language standardisation.

If we now look at the broader New England, on the west, the Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi) language group occupied a vast sweep of territory from the Upper Hunter through the western slopes and plains into what is now Queensland and had at least five major dialects or up to seven if the related languages of Yuwaalaraay and Yuwaaliyaay are included.

To the east, the Bundjalung language group occupied the Northern Rivers north from the Clarence extending into Queensland.

In geographic terms, the Gamilaraay territory was larger, but the richness of Bundjalung territory made it the largest language group in New England measured by population. There may have been as many as twenty separate Bundjalung dialects!

The Anaiwan or Nganyaywana Aboriginal peoples from the southern areas of the New England Tablelands appear to have been relatively homogeneous and limited in number. Even here, there were several dialects with language differences shading from north to south.

You can see why the early recorders of Aboriginal language might have struggled to understand the pattern! You can also see why there might be so many inconsistencies in our records.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 8 May 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013

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History revisited - traditional speech revived

In April, the NSW Government released Ochre, a new framework for Aboriginal policy in NSW. This accepted a recommendation from the Ministerial Taskforce on Aboriginal Affairs that Aboriginal Language and Culture Nests should be trialled initially in one location each for five Aboriginal language groups: Gamilaraay; Gumbaynggirr; Bundjalung; Paarkintji/Barkindji; and Wiradjuri. Three of the five language groups and both the coastal languages are centered in the broader New England. All three Northern language groups have modern relevance to Armidale.

Beneath this simple recommendation lies a remarkable story of loss and now partial recovery. That recovery would not have been possible without the work of scholars especially from the University of New England but also the ANU, nor would it have been possible without the dedication of a relatively small number of Aboriginal elders across the broader New England who fought to revive their language.

I thought that I might explore a little of that story over my next few columns. It’s too complicated to explain in just five hundred words. In this column, I want to introduce you to Aboriginal languages.

In 1788 there were perhaps 250 Aboriginal language groups in Australia incorporating perhaps 700 dialects. The precise distinction between language and dialect can be a difficult one and has become a very real issue among some Aboriginal people who object to their language being classified as a dialect of another. From my perspective, the question of the relationship between languages and between languages and dialects should be seen as a technical one.

In considering languages, we need to make a clear distinction between language and political or territorial boundaries. The broad language groups often covered substantial geographic areas. There were a variety of shifting territorial and political boundaries within each language group. Just speaking the same or a related language did not make for everlasting friendship!

Within this language diversity, all the New England language groups belong to what has come to be called Pama-Nyungan, the dominant language grouping over much of Australia. For a long time, one New England language, Anaiwan, found on the southern New England Tablelands, was seen as distinct, not related to other Aboriginal languages. It took the pioneering work of linguist Terry Crowley to show that Anaiwan was in fact related to adjoining languages.

All the Pama-Nyungan languages have relatively free word order, allowing all possible ordering of subject, verb, object. Verbs and nouns have markers added to indicate who does what to whom, when and how. New words are formed by adding other meaningful segments.

This can make for very long words, really sentences in themselves. The combination of this with the free word order makes for great variety. In my next column, I will tell you about the New England languages themselves. In the meantime, if you would like to listen to a New England language, follow this link - http://www.yuwaalaraay.org/stories.html.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 1 May 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013

The other columns in this series are:

• History revisited - family's role in a language
• History revisited - geography contributes to language diversity
• History revisited - the destruction of language and how it can really survive

History revisited - the untold story of our Chinese community

In August, 1983, a new display opened at McCrossin’s Mill, Uralla. It was a rather special display on New England’s Chinese heritage.

Growing up, I knew a little of New England’s Chinese heritage. I knew that the Chinese had been here, but beyond a few gravestones in the Other Denominations’ section of the Armidale cemetery and store names in other New England towns. Beyond that, I knew nothing of our Chinese connection. It was all very vague,

I knew from novels that many Chinese had been attracted to the Californian gold fields and had gone on to do things like help build railways. I did not know that California had been called the Gold Mountain, that after the discovery of gold in Australia California became the Old Gold Mountain, Australia the New Gold Mountain.

The first Chinese did not come for gold. They came because NSW had a labour shortage with the ending of transportation, and the regular trade routes between China and England via NSW provided an easy entry route.

In September 1849, at least two Chinese workers entered into the service of J Pike of Pikedale run in what is now the Queensland Granite Belt. In May 1850, M H Marsh employed ten Chinese workers from Amoy, all of whom arrived on one ship, the Cadet. By the end of 1852, Chinese workers were widely if thinly dispersed across New England.

Life could be dangerous for our early Chinese. In May 1852, the Phoenix sank on its way to the Clarence River with 12 Chinese on board. A thirteenth was found wandering the beach with the Aborigines. He was reportedly quite mad, although no-one knew how he had got there.

The discovery of gold in New England brought thousands of Chinese to the New England gold fields from Nundle North. As the gold petered out at Rocky River, the Chinese moved to the tin fields on the Western Slopes and beyond into Queensland. The Chinese influence lingered, especially in Tingha, but for most of us, this early period had become a distant memory.

In September 1982, Kent Mayo and Ron Alexander from the Uralla Historical Society were shown dust coated, water damaged, Chinese artifacts that had come from Tingha piled in a galvanised iron shed. Recognising their significance, they arranged to purchase them for the Society.

Other artifacts were collected across New England

The resulting display that opened in August 1983 provided a remarkable insight into a forgotten part of New England’s life.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 24 April 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013