Name: Hope Vale elders using modern platform as latest tool to preserve ancient Guugu Yimithirr language - ABC News
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Hope Vale elders using modern platform as latest tool to preserve ancient Guugu Yimithirr language - ABC News

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Hope Vale elders using modern platform as latest tool to preserve ancient Guugu Yimithirr languageShareGuugu Yimithirr is the mother tongue for the people of Hope Vale, 40 kilometres north-west of Cooktown, and has traditionally been kept alive through intergenerational storytelling.That practice is still common, but now elders are helping to create video tutorials that are being shared via YouTube.Hope Vale Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy, the local school, has a as part of its curriculum.But Cheryl Cannon, the school's attendance officer, said the videos were promoting learning both inside and outside of the classroom — and not just for the school students."They're watching at home as a family; younger siblings are at home being exposed to it," Ms Cannon said. "The students from the school here, they pretend to be the teachers so they're teaching their younger siblings by copying the video and it's just great fun for them."Especially for the younger parents … [they] didn't grow up speaking it like I did. "[They're] being exposed to it too because their children are watching it at home … everyone watches it as one." While the Hope Vale school was only closed for a week during the COVID-19 lockdown, Ms Cannon said having the videos available helped students keep up their language studies."Even though our school wasn't forced to do online learning, it was great to have those videos on hand to be easily accessed at home on YouTube — everybody knows how to get on there," Ms Cannon said."Those videos and having those visuals really assist the children to appreciate their culture, especially their language."And since classes recommenced in Term 2, Ms Cannon said school attendance rates had never been better. "We've reached above 90 per cent. Even with this virus around, our school since it started this term, our numbers have been high," she said.Of the now 1,400-strong Guugu Yimithirr nation, only about half speak the language. Fluency generally ends with the grandparents' generation.Dora Gibson is one a handful of Hope Vale elders who have lent their knowledge to the video project organised by the Good to Great Schools Australia (GGSA) program."GGSA were interested in keeping our language alive, and we support any initiative that ensures Guugu Yimithirr is passed on to future generations," she said. Ms Gibson said she was driven to help preserve the Guugu Yimithirr language in honour of the elders before her that kept it alive during the 1940s.Due to World War II, Guugu Yimithirr people were evacuated from the Hope Vale mission in 1942 and sent to Woorabinda, west of Rockhampton, for more than seven years. "They kept it alive while they were in exile [but] they brought it back and it's our turn to keep that going," Mrs Gibson said."It was suppressed, they weren't allowed to speak it at school but the elders were strong enough to keep it going at home, speaking it in daily activities and teaching kids from when they were small."Guugu Yimithirr was one of the earliest Australian Aboriginal languages to be recorded, with Sydney Parkinson recording 200 words during Captain Cook's stopover in Far North Queensland in 1770.These words included 'kangaroo', which would become part of mainstream Australian English.16 Jun 202016 Jun 2020Tue 16 Jun 2020 at 8:06pm, 16 Jun 202016 Jun 2020Tue 16 Jun 2020 at 11:40pmMore on:

Hope Vale elders using modern platform as latest tool to preserve ancient Guugu Yimithirr languageShareGuugu Yimithirr is the mother tongue for the people of Hope Vale, 40 kilometres north-west of Cooktown, and has traditionally been kept alive through intergenerational storytelling.That practice is still common, but now elders are helping to create video tutorials that are being shared via YouTube.Hope Vale Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy, the local school, has a as part of its curriculum.But Cheryl Cannon, the school's attendance officer, said the videos were promoting learning...

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Hope Vale elders using modern platform as latest tool to preserve ancient Guugu Yimithirr language - ABC News

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