Arabana YaNhi! Tanganekald Yan! Keeping Ancestral Voices Alive

The Hon. T.T. NGO (14:56): My question is to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. Will the minister inform the council on the recent exhibition launch of Arabana Yanhi! Tanganekald Yan! Keeping Ancestral Voices Alive held at the South Australian Museum? I hope I have pronounced that right.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (14:56): I thank the honourable member for his question and his almost spot-on pronunciation of Arabana and Ngarrindjeri language. Thank you; I appreciate the question and the interest the honourable member has had in this area and his close connection to Aboriginal people in the state through many years of service, including chairing the Aboriginal Lands Parliamentary Standing Committee.

I was fortunate recently to attend the exhibition of Arabana Yanhi! Tanganekald Yan! Keeping Ancestral Voices Alive. As Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, I often get invited to exhibitions and events and I am always particularly excited when there are events that display Aboriginal culture and events that are significant in keeping languages alive and the revival of Aboriginal languages.

This exhibition commenced with a Welcome to Country and a smoking ceremony by Uncle Moogie Sumner on the lawns of the South Australian Museum, followed by a speech from Nayuku Pumpal-ku, Karina Lester, a Yankunytjatjara woman and manager of the Mobile Language Team based at Adelaide University.

Karina highlighted that we are currently in the first year of the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages, so it was fitting to be able to celebrate their efforts in helping with reviving two South Australian Aboriginal languages: the Arabana of the western Lake Eyre region and the Tanganekald of the Coorong region. The exhibition featured artworks from the late Mr Stengle and also from Lakota Milera-Weetra. Also included in the exhibition were flashcards that promote the languages and are available to download for free.

Materials like this continue to be important resources for Aboriginal people, as well as the community broadly, in understanding the intrinsic connection between language and culture. Unfortunately, for many well-documented reasons out of the control of Aboriginal people, the right to continue language was stripped from them during the process of colonisation and in the years after.

There is research that is being conducted, and continues to be conducted, that indicates the important role that language plays in cultural healing and empowerment, while I am aware of research that is now linking the revival of Aboriginal languages to improved physical and mental health.

Furthermore, Aboriginal languages are increasingly playing an important role in our education system. I have been to a number of events over recent years where the Kaurna language is being promoted in a number of ways, through dictionaries and through things like resources for schoolchildren. It is pleasing to see other languages from around our state being revived and being spoken and being recorded and taught. It's promising to see the Aboriginal Living Languages South Australia, a cooperative between the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal Corporation, South Australian Museum and the Mobile Language Team at the University of Adelaide continuing this important work.

I would like particularly to acknowledge the presence at the launch and the interest from the former Premier, the member for Dunstan, Steven Marshall, who played a role in starting this project. It was pleasing to be able to acknowledge that at the launch of this exhibition. There are some things that different sides of politics disagree on, even in Aboriginal affairs, but there are many things, particularly in this area, that we do agree on, so I pay tribute to the work in this area of the Hon. Steven Marshall.