This National Indigenous Languages Day, let’s celebrate the community-led initiatives that focus on building capacity and sustainability for future generations.
Mary Simon, Canada’s first Inuit governor-general and a native Inuktitut speaker, inspects the honour guard as she arrives at Rideau Hall in July 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
Genetic analysis of grizzly bear populations in British Columbia has revealed a connection in how bear and human cultures may have responded to the landscape.
Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt speaks with the YELLAKA Dancers at the meeting of the Joint Council on Closing the Gap.
David Muriuz/AAP
The Closing the Gap dashboard includes data on the 17 socioeconomic targets in the national agreement. But this information isn’t enough on its own to bring real change.
Mary Simon, an Inuk leader and former Canadian diplomat, has been named as Canada’s next governor general — the first Indigenous person to serve in the role.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Australian Indigenous languages use a fascinating array of expressions drawing on body parts to describe emotions. Here is a guide to some of the most intriguing ones.
Indigenous languages around the world are declining at a rapid rate, but linguists can help language revival by working with communities of native speakers.
Incoming Australian Greens Senator Senator Lidia Thorpe lifts one fist and carries a message stick, during a swearing-in ceremony at Parliament House, Canberra.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Strong language and culture is listed among the fresh Closing the Gap targets. But, as the latest research on speakers and learners shows, language is fundamental to well-being across the board.
A white sucker underwater in the St. Lawrence River.
(Shutterstock)
Children in an Oji-Cree northern First Nation are learning traditional teachings about ‘Namebin’ (suckers) and working on literacy skills at the same time through a community literacy project.
Illustration by Wiehan de Jager from the story by ‘I Like to Read,’ by Letta Machoga, originally from the African Storybook project. This story is now available on Storybooks Canada in 28 languages.
(African Storybook)
A free, open-access repository of multilingual children’s stories is one response to the United Nations’ urgent call to promote equitable education on the International Day of Education, January 24.
Children quickly took to the robot and developed a relationship with it.
Screenshot Youtube
Maitland Lutheran School, of 240 students in rural South Australia, found a way to teach children programming code and an old Aboriginal language. The answer was Pink, the robot.
Learning in their mother tongue facilitates children’s ability to learn another language.
Cecil Bo Dzwowa/Shutterstock/Editorial use only
Usually, a minor language will adopt words from a dominant language, but NZ English bucks this trend. It has been borrowing a growing number of Māori words, not always to add meaning but to mark identity.
A new 50 cent coin marks the International Year of Indigenous Languages.
Royal Australian Mint
Diversity of world’s sign languages tells us much about how we communicate.
November 2016 (left to right) Seraine Namundja, Donna Nadjamerrek, Julie Narndal and Cheryl Nadjalaburnburn preparing a new course in Bininj Kunwok, an Indigenous language in the Northern Territory.
Provided by Cathy Bow
In 60 years’ time, only 13 of Australia’s Indigenous languages will be left, unless something is done to encourage children to keep speaking their language.
Angurugu mission school children in the 1940s on Groote Eylandt, NT. Missions helped both erode and preserve Indigenous languages.
Groote Eylandt Linguistics
Australia was one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world but today, few people speak an Australian language.
Could music one day be something we experience through augmented reality, responding to the way we move through the world? Sound supplemented with colours and shapes?
Mavis Wong/The Conversation NY-BD-CC
Associate Professor and Reader, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Research Unit for Indigenous Language, School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne