Image caption: School ©The Museum Board of South Australia 2021

Arabana Yanhi! Tanganekald Yan! Keeping Ancestral voices alive is the first in a series of exhibitions promoting South Australia’s unique and important Aboriginal language heritage. It has been developed in partnership with the University of Adelaide’s Mobile Language Team and First Nations artists.

Dr Paul Monaghan, Manager and Senior Linguist, Mobile Language Team explained that in 1836 there were 46 Aboriginal languages spoken in SA.

“Half of the First Nations languages spoken in South Australia have been lost since the arrival of the British. In 2022 only 4 are considered strong, 19 partly spoken and 23 have fallen completely silent.”

“Arabana Yanhi! Tanganekald Yan! Keeping Ancestral voices alive seeks to arrest the erosion of South Australian Aboriginal languages with help from Community members, both past and present.”

“In the 1930s, Tanganekald man Milerum worked closely with South Australian Museum ethnologist Norman Tindale to record and preserve Tanganekald language. And today, the knowledge and memories of Arabana Elders are being combined with written and spoken records in libraries, museums, and archives to help rebuild Arabana language. This exhibition aims to help restore these languages and preserve and protect them for future generations,” Dr Monaghan added.

The exhibition features original artwork by Aboriginal artists Lakota Milera-Weetra and the late Jacob Stengle (Karumapuli) that was created for a series of flashcards developed to share, revive, and promote Arabana and Tanganekald languages in their respective communities and across the state. The flashcards are also available for free download via our website.

Responding to the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages in 2022 the South Australian Museum seeks to expand its services to South Australian Aboriginal communities and the broader public through the State’s rich Aboriginal language heritage.

The exhibition and flashcards are part of The Aboriginal Living Languages South Australia (ALLSA), a co-operative partnership between the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal Corporation, South Australian Museum, and the Mobile Language Team at the University of Adelaide. It has been established to preserve and protect languages for future generations.

The ALLSA website has launched with Tanganekald as its first language, drawing from Milerum’s recordings and the contributions of Milerum’s descendants and the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal Corporation as the cultural authority for Tanganekald. Languages from other regions will be added to the website in the future.

The flash cards and the exhibition were made possible with funding support from the Department for Education and MM Electrical Merchandising.

Arabana Yanhi! Tanganekald Yan! Keeping Ancestral voices alive is on now until Sunday 26 March. Open daily, entry is free. For more information visit: www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/event/keepingancestralvoicealive