OPENER: A montage of Indigenous words from various guests plays over of Electric Field's song Pulkupa
VOICEOVER: Word up! Bringing you the diverse languages of Black Australia one word at a time.
PHIL: Phil Sullivan, my name is. I'm from Bourke and I live on Ngemba/ Ngiyampaa Country.
I'd just like to acknowledge Country. We're on Wiradjuri Country here. I just want to give my respect and honour and love to the Wiradjuri Nation in Dubbo here. So my heart is there with them. And so if it's all right for me to talk on Country in our language for the ABC so people can hear it elsewhere. How do we say certain words for certain things. So I just want to acknowledge your Country today. And thank you for allowing me to be on your land.
Originally, I'm from Brewarrina, born in Brewarrina and then moved to Bourke. Still on Ngemba Country, so I was born on Country and still back home there.
Best place on Earth is Bourke. We lived on the Village at the moment it's called, but before that we lived on the Reserve on the edge of town. We end up moving into town. That is to give our family a little bit more chance on what's happening on that side of the river. Otherwise, we'd still be trying to learn a lot about culture on our own side of the river. And that side of the river is where the resources are, where employment is, where money is, all that type of stuff. So we moved into town and we lived on the place called the Bourke Reserve.
If we think about that sort of space sis, there's always three things outside of any town. That's the cemetery is one of them where they take all of our mob all dead people and put them in cemeteries. The tip and the sewage is always on the edge of town. And unless it's been built around, the town gets big and built around these type of things. And obviously the most despised people, even today, when you hear comments right across the land, and that's us mob, always on the edge of town. Some of us may live in town now, but in a spiritual setting, that's very close to being how we used to be living on the edge of town.
So Bourke is one of those places.
Not taking anything away from that, I think it's a really good learning curve for our people to see another world come into Country and tip us upside down. And so we have to adapt and that's our favourite, that's our most important asset is to adapt to where we have to lead and where we have to go too so...
We've forsaken our language. And so this little part about language is good. It's really good. And we use the technology on that side of the river again to get it out there and to relive that and to reinvigorate language is critical. And this little program we're doing now is something very important.
So yeah, my first word is 'mayi'. And mayi is 'one', 'one person'. And so I would use that in a welcome. So I would say yaama, mayi, and then for the rest of everybody else that might be in the room, I would say [language]. But mayi is the word that we would use on that because it represents one person, not a whole lot of people. Mayi means one. And so yeah, that's the first word that we will be learning today. So mayi is one, in English, one person.
And mayi is one person in Ngemba Country, Ngemba language. It's only small and I think it's the best way to start is to start small. And so mayi is one.
I just want to thank you for taking notice to this little segment on Aboriginal language, in particular Ngemba, and hope you have a great day and be blessed.
CLOSER: Electric Field's Pulkupa plays
VOICEOVER: Word up! Bringing you the diverse languages of Black Australia one word at a time