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STORY: These children are learning songs of the Gumbaynggirr…

… the language of an Indigenous Australian people in New South Wales.

Reviving language is seen as critical by many of the country’s Indigenous people.

Australia has one of the highest rates of language loss in the world – from what was once believed to be 250 indigenous languages and around 800 dialects at the time of European colonization.

Bottom-up attempts to bring them back over the years are bearing fruit.

The Gumbaynggirr Giingana Freedom School…

… which opened last year, has nearly quadrupled its number of students from its initial cohort of 16.

Once a week, students go out into the countryside and learn about their relationship to "country” - which is central to Aboriginal people’s spiritual identity.

Clark Webb helped found the school:

“Just listening to our children and our teachers conversing in our language - it's very special. Very special to hear that and to get to where we got to in a pretty relatively short amount of time. It's something that is very humbling and makes me very happy and I know that a lot of our elders feel that as well and often, often tear up and get really emotional about what's happening with their language because it's something that was stolen from them.”

Many indigenous languages were lost due to years of forced assimilation.

A recent 2021 census showed only 9.5% of Indigenous Australians said they spoke one or more Indigenous languages or dialects at home.

For years, their communities faced discrimination for speaking their ancestral tongues.

Ray Ingrey is one of a handful of people fluent in Dharawal, the first language heard by British explorer Captain James Cook when he landed in Australia in 1770.

He says demand is rising for his Gujaga Foundation’s Dharawal language program.

“To date, we're in about 45 schools. Over the next four years, we want to grow that to reach around 6,000 students and have each of our Dharawal language tutors teaching up to 1,000 hours each year.”

Ingrey says attitudes have changed, compared to the past. Non-indigenous parents now tell him that if their child is to learn a second language, they want it to be a local Indigenous one.

In a different part of New South Wales, all 470 students in this primary school learn Dharug, another major indigenous language in the Sydney basin. Shaylan Smith is among them.

“I think it’s important as a proud Aboriginal girl to pass this beautiful language down to people who would look up to me or other Aboriginal people.”

New South Wales plans to roll out a broadened Aboriginal languages syllabus in 2024.

That would mean students whose first language is an Indigenous one, will have new pathways to continue studying it at school.

Jasmine Seymour, an author with Indigenous roots who teaches Dharug to students, feels things have come full circle.

“To be at the other end of history where my language is being revitalized in school is completely profound. And I never take it for granted. It really is an amazing thing.”