First Nations language groups from across Western Australia’s top end have gathered to work out a plan to preserve valuable culture. Increasing the number of language speakers is one of the key aims of the Closing the Gap targets, and Indigenous leaders are putting their heads together to make sure their children speak the language of their ancestors.
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00:00A unique event aimed at saving languages on the verge of extinction.
00:09The West Kimberley Language Gathering brings together 10 language groups from the Dampier
00:14Peninsula in what the organiser describes as an historic moment.
00:18It's a call for action by all our community members, young, old, to engage in language
00:23preservation, whether that's in schools, whether that's in family groups, whether any sort
00:29of way that we can bring back our language. Otherwise, if we don't practice it, it gets
00:35lost and it dies.
00:37Teacher Vincent Mackenzie's language, Badi, is among those critically endangered. He's
00:42now teaching it with the aim of keeping Badi alive.
00:45Our language is falling asleep. We have to keep it strong. We have to pass it on to our
00:53next generation.
00:54Delegates who have flown in from all across the country say events like these are key
00:59in making sure action is taken.
01:01There's a strong view more government support is needed to achieve the Closing the Gap target
01:06of increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speakers by 2031.
01:10Language is no lesser important than our culture, our art, our storytelling in those ways and
01:18so forth. Yet, unfairly, those avenues are being funded far greater than what language
01:26itself is. Yet it's foundational to all of those other elements.
01:30Recognising the importance of language for preserving the world's oldest living culture.