The course was organised by Associate Professor Trevor Evans, Director of MALS, who worked closely with Gamilaraay man Phil Duncan, Aboriginal Cultural Training Coordinator at Macquarie University.
It incorporated vocabulary, grammar structures, role-playing and song in an engaged learning environment, with a mix of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students studying and speaking the ancient language.
At least six Gamilaraay/Yuwaalaraay people and one Muruwari person were present.
Gamilaraay is an Indigenous language which extends from the upper Hunter Valley, into Queensland, and west to Walgett, covering an area of some 75,000 square kilometres including Tamworth, Gunnedah, Moree and many other towns.
Yuwaalaraay country sits west of Gamilaraay land.
Because it is further inland, Yuwaalaraay country was colonised later than Gamilaraay country and so people maintained a higher level of language fluency for longer.
For this reason, Giacon’s courses, which he has been teaching since the ‘90s, incorporate historical material from both languages, with Yuwaalaraay knowledge considered vital to the Gamilaraay revival process.
“Yuwaalaraay and Gamilaraay are not that different,” Giacon said.
“I think that the two mobs would have understood each other pretty well anyway.”
Giacon’s journey into language revitalisation began in Walgett, a small town in rural central-north New South Wales, which sits near the far west edge of Gamilaraay land.
Giacon lived there from 1993 to 2005, first working as a high school relief teacher and soon commencing his study of language.
He worked closely with members of the local Yuwaalaraay-Gamilaraay community, especially Uncle Ted Fields.
Corinne Williams had written a short grammar of Yuwaalaraay in 1980; this, and other earlier materials, were the sources of most language knowledge.
Giacon had already been interested in the concept of language revival, after seeing the work of his close friend Steve Morelli, another Christian Brother who had been working with Gumbaynggirr language in a community near Nambucca, and who this year won the Patji-Dawes Award for language teaching.
“I had in the back of my mind that this was a possibility, but really nothing much was going to happen until I made some good contacts in the community,” Giacon said.
So it was lucky that Giacon met Uncle Ted, “an individual who was really keen on keeping the stories alive, keeping the knowledge of country alive, looking after country and keeping language alive”.
Giacon said that although Gamilaraay/Yuwaalaraay words were present in the community, language levels were not strong.
Giacon and Uncle Ted recorded around 1000 words that Ted knew, going through lists of words and writing down any that he came out with.
The most important historical materials were tapes made by Arthur Dodd and Fred Reece in the 1970s, in conversation with Janet Mathews and Corinne Williams.
Both men were born in 1890, and were in their 80s when being recorded.
Dodd was a Wayilwan man who grew up on Yuwaalaraay country and knew both languages well.
Reece’s mother was Muruwari, and he grew up on Yuwaalaraay country.
“And it’s just a matter of luck you know, that Dodd and Reece got on with the people doing the interviewing,” Giacon mused.
“There are about 50 hours of tapes, and they are a really major source of our knowledge.”
Giacon himself is not Indigenous.
He was born in Italy and raised in Australia since he was four.
He grew up in Wollongong and said that as a child, he was quite happy to speak Italian, although a lot of his friends wouldn’t.
“I had a strong sense of language and in my family there was much more discussion of language than I’m aware of in Anglo families,” he said.
As a European Australian, Giacon’s involvement with Aboriginal languages has at times been controversial.
He recalls a course he ran in Sydney in 2006, when one Aboriginal man didn’t return to class after morning tea.
Giacon was worried and when the man eventually came back, he said to Giacon: “It’s nothing personal but all my life we’ve been saying... ‘These bloody whitefellas, they took the language away from us, and now here’s a whitefella telling me how to talk it’.”
“The emotional reaction is really strong for some,” Giacon indicated.
After colonisation, the majority of Gamilaraay speakers died from starvation, diseases such as smallpox and violence and warfare.
Up until the 1960s, many people were punished for using their mother tongue, and if someone complained about an Aboriginal child attending school, they could have been excluded.
Giacon is emphatic that what he seeks to do is assist the Indigenous people to be the ones who teach the language.
And this is exactly what he has been achieving.
“One of the nice things about it now is it’s very much a cooperative effort,” Giacon said.
One of the teachers who co-taught the course at MALS was Tracey Cameron, a Gamilaraay woman who grew up on Wiradjuri land and co-teaches on many of Giacon’s courses.
Cameron said that learning and speaking language is a vital step toward decolonisation.
The impact of the loss of language was deep and on-going.
“People were forbidden to speak it in the past, and people were forcibly removed from their land,” Cameron said.
“Language is a part of your identity and people see that now.
“Speaking language is a reclaiming of something that was taken away, and making a point that we’re reclaiming it.”
The course coincided with this year’s NAIDOC Week, which ran from July 7 to 14, in celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture and achievements.
This year, NAIDOC had the theme of “truth” at its core.
“Looking at language is a good way to start telling the truth,” Cameron said.
She has been studying and teaching Gamilaraay language for 10 years, and holds a Masters of Indigenous Language Education from Sydney University.
Welsh, a Yuwaalaraay man who is also the grandson of Uncle Ted, travelled from Walgett to co-teach the course in Sydney.
He said that in Walgett, language levels are noticeably improving.
“I think it’s picking up, the kids definitely know a few dozen words,” he said.
“And where’s the language coming from?” Giacon queried.
“It’s coming out of books and schools.”
One of the students in the course at MALS was Lauren Davies, a Gamilaraay woman and student of law and criminology, who previously had not had any experience with language.
She said that commencing the course “was daunting but I’m enjoying it”.
“I haven’t remembered everything but I’m definitely onto something and I hope to continue learning it,” she added.
“By the time I have children I’d like to be able to string along a few sentences...”
Giacon first taught Yuwaalaraay language at an Aboriginal organisation in Goodooga and at TAFE in Walgett in 1996.
Since 2006, he has taught Gamilaraay at the University of Sydney and more recently at the Australian National University (ANU), including two-week intensive summer schools in Sydney.
He completed his PhD on the languages in 2014.
In 2016, based on his work at ANU, Giacon was the recipient of the Patji-Dawes Award, Australia's most prestigious recognition for language teaching.
From next year, Tracey Cameron will take over Giacon’s post at Sydney University.
“I don’t see a finish point, because that’s the revitalisation situation,” Cameron said.
“We need a lot of people to be involved.
“A lot of people are building up their knowledge, and this is what I’m doing.”
She said that there’s a huge amount of interest among Gamilaraay people to learn, but also quite a strong interest among non-Gamilaraay people.
“I think it would be fantastic for non-Indigenous people to be learning an Australian language instead of a foreign language...” Cameron added.
“I see in the future, not only me talking and knowing Gamilaraay language, but Gamilaraay people able to speak our language again, and kids in schools learning the language of the country that they’re living on.
“That’d be fantastic.
“Australian languages are part of our joint, shared heritage, and it is our responsibility to keep them going and for all people to know about them.”
Visit the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies’ website for a map of the language areas of Indigenous Australia.
