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| Indigenous communities number under half a million in today's Australia |
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Stories
Librarians
in Australia have launched a three-year project to rediscover lost indigenous
languages.
The New
South Wales State Library says fragments of many lost languages exist in papers
left by early settlers.
Before
British colonialisation began there in 1788, around 250 aboriginal languages
were spoken in Australia by an estimated one million people.
Only a few
dozen languages remain and the communities number around 470,000 people in a
nation of 22 million.
'Unrivalled'
accounts
"A
nation's oral and written language is the backbone to its culture," said
the Arts Minister of New South Wales, George Souris.
"The
preservation of the languages and dialects of our indigenous citizens is a very
important project in this regard."
Noelle
Nelson, the acting chief executive of Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto,
which is backing the project, said the settlers' first-hand accounts at the
State Library are "unrivalled".
"These
first-hand accounts are often the only surviving records of many indigenous languages,"
Nelson told the AFP news agency.
"The
project will introduce and reconnect people with indigenous culture."
An
Australian government survey in 2004 found that only 145 indigenous languages
were still spoken in Australia and that 110 of these were severely or
critically endangered.
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| Brazil's indigenous protection service says the area threatened by drug traffickers has 'the greatest concentration of isolated groups the world'. Photograph: Gleison Miranda/AFP/Getty Images |
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