Indigenous Language
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Posted by Tyson Woorama Apr 24, 2006 |
If you emigrate as a child to Australia from, say, Greece, you have access to lots of funding and extra tuition at school for ESL (English as a Second Language) learning. However, if you are an Indigenous student who speaks an Indigenous language and no English, you are entitled to NOT ONE CENT.
As a teacher of language for ten years, I encountered a lot of institutional racism and outrageously ethnocentric beliefs surrounding Indigenous languages, and the assimilatory notion of replacing native tongues with "Standard Australian English".
As a deconstructivist, I have also become aware of the hidden racism and colonial agendas that are unwittingly carried within everyday language.
The following articles explore some of these issues.