The homecoming of an Indigenous Australian diaspora as impetus for language revival: the Kaurna of the Adelaide plains, South Australia

ABSTRACT

Following the invasion, or colonisation as some prefer to call it, Indigenous Australia has been characterised by plummeting populations, largely as a result of introduced diseases and the movement of peoples, following the theft of their lands and in response to colonial and subsequent Australian state and federal government policies. At times, various Aboriginal peoples were completely removed from their homelands. One such case concerns the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains in South Australia. Following the abandonment of restrictive policies, Aboriginal people drifted back to Adelaide and many began to identify with their Kaurna ancestry. All Kaurna people have multiple ethnicities within their ancestry, providing opportunities for shifting identities and shifting affinities. This paper investigates the role that the Kaurna language now serves for the returning Kaurna diaspora and for others in metropolitan Adelaide. Within the Kaurna community there are strong pressures for both conformity and non-conformity. We see this in relation to the Kaurna language through language planning measures on the one hand, and on the other through identity politics expressed through the language. Kaurna language is in demand by Kaurna people as a source of names and for emblematic use within the public domain. It is just beginning to make inroads into private domains as several families attempt to raise young children speaking Kaurna. The Kaurna language is also in demand by the wider community, where there is a strong and largely unmet demand for teachers of Kaurna and for Kaurna names and translations of various kinds. The Kaurna language has re-emerged from a point of almost total obscurity 30 years ago to something of an auxiliary language used alongside English. Whilst it will never replace English, it is still on the ascendency, as it addresses needs both for the returning diaspora and wider society.

KEYWORDS:

• Kaurna
• language and identity
• language revival
• auxiliary language
• emblematic language

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Rob Amery, Head of Linguistics, University of Adelaide, completed a PhD in 1998 (published 2000) on Kaurna language reclamation. For more than 25 years he has worked closely with Kaurna people and their language, forming Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi (KWP) with Kaurna Elders in 2002.

ORCID

Rob Amery http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3293-8349

Notes

1. The Kaurna spelling used today follows spelling reforms adopted in 2010. These are discussed later in this chapter.

2. Kudnarto is a Kaurna birth-order name, establishing this woman as being the third born in her family.

3. It is impossible to calculate this percentage with precision as Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data collection areas do not follow the lines drawn on the Kaurna Native Title Claim map.

4. Ivaritji died in 1929 (Gara, 1990, p. 66), two years earlier than when Tindale claimed she gave her approval.

5. Nunga is a word of self-identification used by Aboriginal people from the southern districts of South Australia, including Adelaide.

6. Buckskin was directed by Dylan McDonald, a young Aboriginal filmmaker from Alice Springs. Though it was his first film, it won the Foxtel Australian Documentary Prize at the Sydney Film Festival in 2013. It has also been shown at film festivals in Adelaide, Canberra, Tahiti, Berlin and New York.