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Language in Australia

Indigenous language denialism in Australia

By November 11, 202013 Comments8 min read9,880 views

Gerald Roche (Senior Research Fellow, La Trobe University) and Jakelin Troy (Director, Indigenous Research, The University of Sydney)

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Source: Australian Museum

Editor’s note: This week (Nov 08-15) we are celebrating NAIDOC week. “NAIDOC” stands for “National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee.” The theme of this year’s NAIDOC week is “Always was, always will be” in recognition of the fact that First Nations people have occupied and cared for the Australian continent for over 65,000 years. Indigenous Languages have been a inextricable part of this history. Yet the value of Indigenous Languages continues to be denied, as Gerald Roche and Jakelin Troy show here.

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A New Era for Indigenous Languages?

Despite decades of research and public outreach demonstrating the importance of Indigenous languages, negative attitudes about the maintenance and revitalization of these languages persist among the general public in Australia. Here, we argue that we need to think about the tenacity of these negative attitudes as a form of denial, like climate denial or genocide denial. We also argue that now is a crucial time to confront that denial.

2019 was nominated by the UN as the International Year of Indigenous Languages, and the years 2022-2032 have been nominated as the decade of Indigenous languages. These high-profile international mega-events seemingly promise a coming era of unprecedented attention to and support for Indigenous languages.

This promise extends to Australia. We joined in the International Year of Indigenous Languages, with numerous activities organized by the Department of Communication and the Arts. The Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies recognized 2019 as an “opportunity for all Australians to engage in a national conversation about Indigenous languages.”

Source: Australian Museum

Australia is the only country in the world that has a national schools curriculum that supports the teaching of all its Indigenous languages. ‘The Australian Curriculum Languages – Framework for Teaching Aboriginal Languages and Torres Strait Islander Languages’ provides for every school in Australia to teach one or more Australian languages—the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. In spite of this historic development in our education system, most Australians seem to be oblivious or, worse, hostile to Australian languages. Plans are now afoot to take part in the coming decade of Indigenous languages, but how will Australia support Australian languages?

Ongoing trends and recent events in Australia suggest that significant challenges lie ahead. The Third National Indigenous Languages Report, published in August this year, found that most of Australia’s Indigenous languages are highly ‘endangered,’ while only a small and declining number (currently 12) are considered ‘strong.’ Meanwhile, recent efforts to bolster the role of English, seen in new regulations enforcing English requirements for partner visas, have strengthened problematic associations between the English language and Australian citizenship. And most disturbingly, we continue to see the destruction of Indigenous heritage by both commercial and state parties.

All of this suggests that Australia must still confront massive social and political barriers if Indigenous languages are going to flourish. As the analysis below demonstrates, denial of the importance of Indigenous languages and the reality of their revitalization persists, and are expressed in public forums with surprising impunity.

Indigenous Languages and the Australian Public  

Source: Australian Museum

We undertook a preliminary analysis of comments made on five articles in the Conversation, published between August 2014 and July 2020; the data we analyze is available here. These articles focused on different aspects of the maintenance and revitalization of Indigenous languages in Australia. We collated a total of 49 comments from them.

We began by classifying the comments into negative, positive or both/neither regarding their view of Indigenous languages. We found that  21 (42.8%) of the comments were unambiguously negative in their appraisal, while 14 (28.5%) were positive; the remaining were either neutral or ambiguous.

We then examined the negative comments for recurrent themes that were used to justify and rationalize these views. We found five major themes: language revitalization is impractical; it harms Indigenous people and communities; revitalized languages are inauthentic; government support for Indigenous languages is inappropriate, and; English should be promoted instead of Indigenous languages. Each theme is examined in turn below.

Commentators suggested that it was “impractical,” “absurd,” or not “feasible” to maintain and revitalize Indigenous languages, or that these languages are “doomed,” and therefore any interventions were useless. Some commentators took a modified position, suggesting that the proposed methods, rather than revitalization itself, were impractical. One commentator attempted to demonstrate the impracticality of supporting Indigenous languages with a hypothetical scenario: a factory in an “Aborigine area” where all signage would have to be in English as well as “the various Aboriginal languages/dialects,” leading to an unsafe work environment.

Another theme was that maintaining and revitalizing Indigenous languages is harmful. Some suggested that supporting Indigenous languages has adverse economic impacts, primarily because English is the language of economic advancement: “English, in Australia must be the language of the classroom as it will be the key to the factory, office and other workplaces.” Others stressed that supporting Indigenous languages would isolate Indigenous people: from the rest of society, in remote locations, and in the past. Support for Indigenous language was associated with Indigenous people living “in the desert, isolated from mainstream society,” “condemned” to becoming a “living museum,” unable to “appreciate their links to people in other regions.” A variant of this argument was that providing support for language revitalization takes funds away from communities where Indigenous languages are strong.

Source: Australian Museum

Commentators also employed a ‘bootstraps’ argument, insisting that government interventions in Indigenous languages were inappropriate because communities should take sole responsibility for their languages. One commentator stated that “The real responsibility lies within each community to promote language usage,” while another emphasized the need for “a grass roots commitment within the community.” This point was often stressed by making comparisons with successful efforts of migrant communities to maintain their languages in Australia. These comments seemingly imply that if Indigenous communities need government support, it is because they are either unwilling or unable to maintain their languages themselves.

A fourth theme in the negative comments focused on issues of authenticity. It was argued that the languages, speakers, or the use of languages were, essentially, fake. Regarding revitalized languages, it was argued that, “We don’t know what the languages were really like,” and that we can “never know” their pronunciation. Not only were the languages described as fake, but it was also asserted that, “Aboriginal people are really English speakers.” Finally, the use of such languages is also deemed inappropriate in the modern world, in places that “are now completely covered in concrete, industry, and modern life.”

A final theme was that English should be prioritized. The importance of English was sometimes suggested to derive from its official status: “English is the official language in Australia.” More often, it was suggested that English ‘simply is’ the dominant language, and that prioritizing it is mere realism: “Living in Australia means speaking English.” One commentator also suggested that English is a “very rich language,” that contains “the words needed for modern, global life.” This suggests that Indigenous languages are, by contrast, ‘poor’ and have vocabularies unsuited to ‘modern, global life.’

Source: Australian Museum

Understanding Denial

All the positions outlined above constitute denial insofar as they are counterfactual. In contrast to what these commentators suggest, language revitalization is thriving in Australia. Many languages of the south east and south west of Australia have come back into active use after more than one hundred years of dormancy. One such language is Kaurna of the Adelaide Plains, not spoken for more than one hundred years when its community began to reconstruct the language from sparse memories and some historic documents, assisted by linguist Rob Amery. It is now a thriving language with its community using the language on a daily basis for casual and formal communication. It began with the community wanting to teach the language in their schools and this continues today.

Rather than harming Indigenous people, language revitalization is linked to increased wellbeing. In talking about the renewal of Kaurna and other languages, Kaurna educator Stephen Goldsmith says, “When we’re talking about the Aboriginal culture, we’re talking about the cultural heritage of every Australian…When people go into communities they start to understand the depth and the knowledge of Aboriginal people and how we operate as part of the environment.”

Although language revitalization requires commitment from the community, it also requires government support, in both policy and funding. And languages that have undergone renewal of their use as community languages are as real and authentic as any language. Finally, English is not Australia’s official language nor is it an Australian language; it is a language of Australia, imported like the many others that are now languages of Australia.

Source: Australian Museum

These are all established facts, accessible to anyone who cares to look. There are debates about details, but not basic truths. Therefore, if the comments we analyze are expressions of ignorance, it is willful ignorance. More than merely counterfactual, however, these arguments are also denialist in the sense that they aim to obstruct a course of action that is suggested by those recognized facts. In this case, they aim to justify and rationalize an unjust status quo that Indigenous people have persistently spoken up against.

The denialist arguments described above follow a common pattern shared with denialist efforts to suppress language revitalization elsewhere. However, they also exist in a uniquely Australian context, and an important aspect of this context is anti-Indigenous racism. A recent survey found that three quarters of Australians hold ‘implicit bias’ against Indigenous people, and the Online Hate Prevention Institute has tracked rising anti-Indigenous racism in Australian online space, particularly following this year’s Black Lives Matter protests.

We need to better understand the relationships between anti-Indigenous racism and the denialist positions described here.

If the UN decade of Indigenous language is going to truly help Indigenous languages in Australia flourish, it will be essential to understand both the extent of denialist sentiments, and the complex ways they interact with the wider political context. Broad public support will be essential to promoting Indigenous languages: to create a safe space where Indigenous people can undertake the difficult and emotional work of reclaiming their languages; to protect communities and individuals from backlash; to ensure that funding is secured and its use supported; and as an essential part of any political change within our democratic political system.

To win this support, we have to stop denying the existence of denial, try and better understand how and why opposition to Indigenous language revitalization exists, and explore how it might be countered.

Gerald Roche

Author Gerald Roche

Gerald Roche is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and Philosophy at La Trobe University. His research focuses on the politics of language diversity, endangerment, and revitalization. He is currently working on a research project on Tibetans and urbanization in China, focusing on the place of Tibet's minority languages in cities.

More posts by Gerald Roche

Join the discussion 13 Comments

  • Greg Dickson says:

    Anecdotally, I have noticed quite a remarkable change in the Australian public since I started working in language revitalisation in the NT 18 years ago. I feel like years ago, conversations about language revitalisation would start with (a) what are Indigenous languages and (b) why we should care about them/think about including them in education etc. Now I feel like the average conversation is “Indigenous languages are important but is it all too hard or can we actually do something”. I remember at Ed Dept linguist told me years ago that lie about being an Aboriginal language-specialist linguist in small talk because critical or ignorant responses were so frequent. I can’t imagine anyone working in language revitalisation feeling the need to lie about their work thesedays, and on social media, I see so many ordinary Australians supportive of the notion of teaching Indigenous languages in schools. The improvement in attitude, in my opinion, is pretty clear.

    That’s not to say that denialism still exists. It certainly does! And analysing it is surely still valuable. But I would suggest delving further into the data used for this article. I’ve written two articles for The Conversation on Indigenous languages and, quite to my surprise actually, the comments have been largely positive, so I wondered if part of the negativity found could be to do with the article itself. Looking at the articles in which the data for this article has been drawn from I did feel like some differentiation can be made. The first four articles seem to be articles that have an underlying assumption that everyone thinks Indigenous languages should be supported and/or revitalised (e.g. “Indigenous languages won’t survive if kids are learning only English”), yet we know not all Australians believe that. To me, that explains why some people feel the need to respond negatively – as a reaction to an over-generalised assumption. The fifth article analysed, about Palawa Kani, is an ‘explainer’ type article, and I notice the comments there are more positive – appreciate of informed discussion and explanation. This was also more the style of my two Convo articles which I felt generated generally positive comments so I really think there’s another factor going on with the comment data – whether audience sentiment towards Indigenous languages has been assumed or over-generalised or not. I’m not at all saying that there are “better” and “worse” ways of writing such articles, I’m just suggesting that certain styles of article may generate certain responses so it may be worth looking more critically at the content that commenters are actually responding to.

    Which leads me to another point – comments on Conversation articles itself are only one measure of how these articles are responded to. And possibly a fairly limited one. Conversation articles are often shared far and wide on social media and also reposted in full by other media. To really round out an analysis of public sentiment, I think looking at social media commentary (Facebook and Twitter) on those articles will actually give a more rounded picture of what people actually think about the topic. Note that Conversation commentary is not very interactive or embedded in commenters’ social world. Conversation commenters are essentially random individuals and we have few further links to those people and little opportunity to interact with them. This makes Conversation comments susceptible to unchecked grandstanding with no further accountability (i.e. if you want to make a negative comment without it biting you on the bum, you pretty much can). On social media however, our profiles are much more linked to our social identity, and people we know and care about will see what we say and do. In my opinion, commentary on social media can very nicely round out an analysis of where public sentiment is at.

    But of course, I’ve done the most annoying thing you can do to busy academics – suggest them to do more analysis when we know full well NO ONE HAS ANY TIME. My main point is, despite denialism still being evident, my own experience is that there have been major changes in attitude and understanding in the past couple of decades. But, I will shut up now and say thanks for the thought provoking piece Jaky and Gerard!

    • Gerald Roche says:

      Hi Greg – Thanks for the feedback. You’re right that’s there’s plenty of room for further analysis, and hopefully we’ll be able to find time for that in the future. Just to respond to a few of the points you raised… In terms of general improvement of public attitudes about Indigenous languages, your comments are suggestive of how useful it would be to track these things over time (imagine having data to show how these attitudes changed over the course of years or decades!). It also makes me curious about what is actually going on in that improvement, because there are at least two things happening, I would suggest. One is the emergence of genuine positive attitudes towards Indigenous languages, and the other is increasing reticence to express overtly racist sentiments in public forums. Teasing these two apart is important because the continued existence of covert racism still drives political behaviors (like voting), and so it is really important to understand how much of changing public sentiment is simply the veiling of prejudice that could previously be expressed openly. I’ll skip the second point you raise about taking the specific nature of the articles that were commented on into account – this point is well-taken. Regarding the other methodological issue you raise – we did try and excavate some of the social media commentary about these articles, but given that they are relatively ancient by digital standards, a lot of that commentary no longer exists. But you’re absolutely right that it would provide a much richer picture of public attitudes if we were able to track responses to these articles live and in the digital wild on Twitter, Facebook, etc. This would be particularly helpful in understanding how widespread these denialist arguments are, and the extent to which they are considered publicly acceptable. So hopefully that’s something we’ll be able to do in the future.

      • Alexandra says:

        Hi Gerald and Jaky, and Greg – re your discussion of gathering and analysing more online commentary about these articles, and given Gerald has explained it couldn’t be done, perhaps you can look for new data in 2021. The federal implementation plan for the new Closing the Gap target on strengthening Indigenous languages is due out mid-year, so we should expect to see new articles, with their own satellite bodies of commentary, around that time. Obviously, I hope you can take this analysis further because it’s valuable!

        And whatever the results of that implementation plan will be, the target itself is another data point indicating the change in attitudes in Australia towards support for language revitalisation. But how far does that support extend, and will our government be willing or able to lead a change of attitudes for those who remain opposed? Let’s see.

  • Laura says:

    Thanks Gerald and Jakelin for sharing your very important and timely work. These types of arguments draw on broader negative discourses, and in turn create roadblocks to the great work that is being done to help revitalize Australia’s Indigenous languages. Identifying the fundamental flaws in each of these arguments, as you do in this post, is so valuable in combating these obstacles.

    • Gerald Roche says:

      Thanks Laura. Although I agree that identifying flaws in these arguments is important, I also think that it should be part of a broader strategy to countering these ideas. In labelling these attitudes ‘denialism,’ we are arguing that they are, in important ways, fact-resistant. There is some literature on how to counter this sort of denialism – work by people like Stanley Cohen, Irene Bruna Seu and Keith Kahn-Harris – and we are currently looking into that in order to learn more about effective ways of combatting Indigenous language denialism.

  • Gegentuul says:

    Thanks for this thought-provoking piece! How denialist sentiments/wilful ignorance are embedded within the broader unjust political system is really an important question to think about.

  • Despite being continents apart how identical are the language attitudes exist both in Pakistan and Australia. Both countries share a colonial past. Thank you authors for brining this to our notice.

    • Gerald Roche says:

      Thanks Zubair. I suspect that these sort of attitudes are very widespread, since, as you point out, they emerge from a common colonial foundation. Still, there is ample scope for comparative studies to look at how these ideologies manifest locally, and the extent to which they are connected transnationally.

    • Gerald Roche says:

      Thanks Gegentuul. One of the questions I would like to follow up on in future research is how these sentiments are tied to changes in the broader political context, for example, the rise of populism, the rise of the far right. Do these developments foster these ideologies and embolden people to express and act on them? And, conversely, what things might help oppose and counteract these attitudes? Answering these questions would require long-term tracking of public attitudes around Indigenous languages.

  • This is extremely important work, for all in Australia. Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and I spent two months studying language policy in Australia in the early 1990s, which we summarised in a lengthy article, ‘Lessons for Europe from language policy in Australia’. It was published In Language Choices. Conditions, constraints and consequences (ed. Martin Pütz, Benjamins, 1997, 115-159). At the time the prospects for Aboriginal languages were grim, despite pioneer efforts by many constituencies. The blog significantly documents how much progress has been made since then, and what the challenges still are in establishing securer forms of racial and linguistic justice. It provides profound evidence of what should be done.

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