Marking the United Nations International Decade of Indigenous Languages, an Aboriginal community in remote Central Australia is working on a ground-breaking new children’s album.
Ampe-mape Alyelheme (Kids Sing) is a collection of songs performed and recorded in the endangered Arrernte language.
Carol Turner, an Arrernte educator-turned-musician with Children’s Ground, the organisation leading the project, says that Ampe-mape Alyelheme “teaches and celebrates Arrernte language and culture through music”.
“We started this to keep our language strong,” she told Al Jazeera. “We want our kids to grow up with music and educational resources that reflect their culture – that can help them to learn, respect, speak, read, write and sing in their first language.”
Despite an estimated 800 diverse Indigenous languages thriving on the Australian continent before British colonisation in 1788, the Australian Bureau of Statistics says that only about 150 are now in daily use.
The remainder are either dormant or extinct, or in the process of revival through painstaking research into archival records produced by early colonists, missionaries and anthropologists.
Post from www.aljazeera.com