Australia is increasingly embracing the use of traditional first nations place names. The ABC’s ‘This Place’ project is helping to explain the origin of the names given to towns, cities and regions across the nation. Theresa Sainty – a Pakana woman from the north-east coast of Lutruwita, Tasmania shares what ‘This Place’ means to her.
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00:00Oh, we're in my favourite place in the foothills of Kunanyi, that the Aboriginal community
00:09named Turekina Truwala.
00:13Turekina Truwala means mountain falls, mountain waterfalls, Turekina being the Palawa Kani
00:20word for waterfall, and Truwala is the Palawa Kani word for mountain.
00:28Tasmanian Aboriginal languages were the first languages to be spoken in Utuwita before invasion.
00:35With invasion and colonisation, my people's lives changed forever.
00:43Not one of us has grown up speaking our languages.
00:46You know, we were discouraged from speaking language and from practising culture.
00:52The Aboriginal community decided that it was time to revive language.
00:59Palawa Kani is a composite language that is retrieved from the journals of white people
01:07who wrote language down, and also from community knowledge.
01:12People have been here since the beginning of time, their stories are in country, their
01:20spirit are in country, and the language, including place names, comes from country
01:27and they've always been there.