All wildlife including birds play an integral part in Aboriginal culture from dreamtime stories to the present. Out here I identify a bird, go to the back of my Ngaanyatjarra dictionary where I can look up the scientific name and find the name in language. The dictionary may then have a brief description. I can then sit down with some of the elders and be told of its importance to their culture.
However we all can’t do that.
Bob Gosford over at The Northern Myth has just written about four terrific posters of central Australian bird knowledge. Each poster is from a different language group and has a picture of the bird, name and a brief story of it’s importance in both language and English to the Aboriginal group represented by the poster. Several of Bob’s pictures have made it into the posters.
The posters are from the Cultural Signs of Central Australia project being run at Charles Darwin University.
The project documents cultural signs in Central Australian Aboriginal languages. These are the social and environmental indicators used by Aboriginal people in Central Australia. For example there are signs that tell people when food is available, predict the weather, warn people of bad events and signal when certain kin are coming. Much of this knowledge is in danger of being lost as Aboriginal society rapidly changes. Many Aboriginal people are concerned that such knowledge should be documented and that resources should be created to assist in the teaching of this knowledge.
The Willie Wagtail pictured at the top of the post is from the bird poster “Birds that show people things” in the Kaytetye language which is spoken around Barrow Creek.
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What a great project!
I wish something like this would be co-ordinated with our elders for some of the dying language/cultural groups in NSW. My own mental collection of wildlife stories from childhood is meagre, and those Wiradjuri with a more thorough connection to our tribal stories are a dwindling group.
Nice post here! This is very informational and very helpful. Thanks for sharing!
g’day Hexy
With the Wiradjuri language now being taught in some schools and with places such as the Wonga Wetlands do you think there is a chance these stories can be retained?
I hope so. I’ve been encouraged by the introduction of school classes, but adult classes are still difficult to find. In-school language education can never be comprehensive.
I’ve never visited Wonga Wetlands, Albury’s a different chunk of Wiradjuri country than my family’s from. There are cultural centres scattered around the place that are doing their best, and a few publications have been produced that I thought were absolutely fantastic.