In 2005 I had the privilege to be appointed as acting principal at Ngukurr School in the Roper River district of the Northern Territory.
Ngukurr was established by the Anglican Mission in 1905 as a refuge for the remnants of the Aboriginal language groups of East Arnhem Land who had been violently dispersed by pastoralists. Slowly a collection of tribes had regathered at a landing place on the mighty Roper River, but because they had been dispersed and lived for many years away from kin and country languages had been lost or fallen into disuse, and the people in the new settlement could not communicate well with either each other or with the new white missionaries.
Gradually the Aboriginal people and the missionaries developed a new language now known as Kriol. Based on English vocabulary it uses Aboriginal syntax and grammar and can rightly be called an Aboriginal language even though it sounds like English.
Having lived with Pitjantjara people at Ernabella in the 1980s and with Arrernte people in Mpwarntwe (Alice Springs) in the '80s, '90s and early 2000s, I was well aware of the power of language when working with Indigenous people. I had learnt conversational Pitjantjara from daily interaction with Anangu in the Pit Lands and had formally studied Arrernte in my role as educator of Arrernte kids from the Alice Springs Town Camps from Veronica Dobson and the other non-indigenous linguists at the Institute for Aboriginal Development.
It was the tradition at Ngukurr for the school to close at midday on Friday. At lunchtime an assembly was held, awards conferred and the principal addressed the school. I participated in this process for a couple of weeks and delivered a short address in English. I quickly noted the keenness of the children to escape to home or the pool as quickly as possible.
After about three weeks I asked one of the Aboriginal staff if she would translate my prepared speech into Kriol so that I could deliver it appropriately. She agreed and then tutored me in pronunciation and delivery.
So I began weekly to address the assembled students and staff, who were joined by a small contingent of parents come to collect their children.
The response was amazing. The kids stopped fidgeting, looked up — and listened! The parents moved closer to get within hearing. The Aboriginal staff smiled almost invisibly, and the non-indigenous staff looked bewildered.
I continued this practice for the rest of my six months appointment at the school. Each week more and more members of the local community came to the Friday afternoon assembly to listen to my very limited attempts to speak to them in their own language.
In the last few weeks of my stay Ted Egan, then Administrator of the Northern Territory, visited the community. Ted graciously agreed to address the assembly. Ted is a gregarious and generous man, famous for his entertaining songs and stories as well as his historical research and education of the wider Australian community.
Ted didn't need a translator. He spoke Kriol fluently having spent many years working with Aboriginal people across the Territory. The locals laughed, smiled, and visibly opened to him, clearly honoured by his effort to meet with them in their country on the basis of equality and respect. I felt vindicated in my earlier efforts to similarly demonstrate my respect for these people and their way of knowing and communicating.
The debate about bilingualism in Northern Territory education is complex and multi-faceted. In schools it usually revolves around effectiveness — the effectiveness of Aboriginal children learning English. The theory is that if children are taught first in the vernacular they will learn concepts faster and better, and then they can ultimately transfer more easily to English. It is about 'transfer literacy'. The real object is the transfer.
The underlying idea is that kids have to learn to read and write English to become effective members of the English speaking world. And this is true.
It was a misguided understanding of this idea that led the NT Labor Government in 2008 to order that Aboriginal children in remote community schools be taught solely in English in the first four hours of school every day. As a reluctant concession it allowed the local language to be taught and used in the last few lessons.
Why was it misguided? Because if the teachers can't communicate with the vernacular-speaking students, and if they lose their trust and confidence, then no learning will occur.
In my view the greatest possible use of the vernacular in education is even more important than what has been debated endlessly by academics about the various benefits of 'two-way learning' or a 'step method'. Learning the vernacular, and learning through the vernacular, establishes in the student a sense of pride and power that comes with competency in language.
It links children to key adults, it encodes knowledge, it affirms linkages to place and country, and it enhances a sense of identity while confirming relationships.
That is the true power of language
Mike Bowden has a Master of Aboriginal Education at Northern Territory University. He was founding coordinator of the Ntyarlke Unit at the Catholic high school in Alice Springs in 1988. From 1993 to 2001 he was manager of community development at Tangentyere Council. In 2005 and 2006 he was acting principal at Ngukurr School and Minyerri School in the Roper River district of the Top End.
Pictured: Students at the Ngukurr School