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Showing posts from April, 2014

"This is a story about the language I lost"

I didn’t speak our lingo. We weren’t allowed at school. The white men got the idea we were abusing them. They couldn’t understand us, so they said you have to speak English, son. I find it better to communicate in English now. But to put both languages together would have been much better. I still feel that way, a strong feeling wishing to speak my lingo, my own language.   My father was from the Wulngarri clan and my mother was from across the river. What my father want[ed] to see was for me to get a better education, from the whiteman. I don’t think he thought about teaching me the lingo. When he started to get old, he started saying he wished us youngfellas had learned our language. He wanted us to learn both ways – the whitefella way and the blackfella way.   When I came back to Ngukurr, the only language was my mother’s. Straight after 1968 I came back. I was around 14 years old. You lose your identity if you lose your language. Your identity is connected to your lan