NAIDOC 2017: ‘Our Languages Matter’
What an exciting time!
This year’s theme saw language workers run off their feet with enquiries. In many regions, NAIDOC activities went on for months with language centres ensuring that every school and community group who asked was able to participate in the celebrations and help spread the word that "Our Languages Matter". Youtube has been filled with beautiful videos that provide a snapshot of the events and activities around the country. First Languages Australia will continue to share these on our Facebook page into the future.
First Languages Australia’s NAIDOC activities focused on building media coverage of local languages. Together with our partners, we initiated a number of national actions designed to have our languages reach the ears of all Australians. Some of the actions that had greatest impact were:
New ABC station identifications (IDs) were recorded by each of the 50 regional stations around Australia.
This brings the total number of voices sharing their languages through these IDs to 143 nationally. Some of the metro stations have also jumped on board.
Language Greeting videos were produced for social media.
Station managers were asked to find a local language teacher willing to come into the studio and be filmed teaching a member of their staff a greeting in their language. Fourteen films were made, each receiving high numbers of viewings and great comments from their audiences.
Goodnight sign off recordings were made for ABC Kids.
Each night of NAIDOC the ABC Kids television broadcast was closed by a child saying goodnight in their language.
First Languages Australia was involved in ICTV’s NAIDOC broadcast. This supported Indigenous Community Television to deliver a very special week of programming to regional and remote communities, where every program was in an Indigenous language.
Mother Tongue films were broadcast on ABC Me throughout the month.
The audio Word Up series on ABC RN Awaye! continued to grow. For NAIDOC, Word Up films were made for four of the languages whose documentation is being supported through the Priority Languages Support Program. These played on social media and were included in the ABC Arts NAIDOC programing.
The winners of the 2016 Marrin Gamu competition had their entry played on high rotation as a publicity piece across ABC Education (on television, radio and online).
And, along with regular work, First Languages Australia staff responded to an average of three media enquiries each day in the months leading to NAIDOC.
The weeks following NAIDOC were alive with conversations about our languages and their importance. First Languages Australia would once again like to acknowledge the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee for adopting languages as the theme for this years celebrations.
