Papulu Apparr-Kari Aboriginal Corporation in Tennant & District Times

Over the past year few years the Language Centre, Department of Environment, Parks and Water Security, NT Government, Linguist, Borroloola School, sponsors of the publishing costs, the very important language speakers, and keepers of the language from the various language groups have been working in partnership on getting books documented to enable publishing of a Plants and Animals resource in their Languages.

Some we have already finished and are awaiting to be launched. We had the launch date set and Covid-19 restrictions impacted, so we had to delay and now we are waiting for the appropriate time for all to attend including the linguist Illana Mushin from University of Queensland and permission to launch as one of the speakers on the book has passed away. We are currently working on eight Language books and some are very close to publishing.

The Warumungu book is in the final stages of being checked and several people are working on that at present to ensure we launch before the end of the year.

This project was started a few years ago in conjunction with our archival program that was funded by the Indigenous Language Archival Grant from the Federal Government, but due to the time and resources the program used we soon ran out of monies, so to ensure we complete it, the Papulu Apparr-Kari Governing Committee has enabled funds from our own earnings to be set aside to pay for the costs of this project and publishing as funding.

The Chairperson Lennie Barton said “This project is important as all our projects are. “We funded this one, but grant money is short, and we have so many language projects to be carried out on the many languages we work with, we need to make sure we service them all when we can.”

We look forward to presenting more published books to community in the future months.

But if you would like to support our continued work on language in a small way come along and look at our great merchandise and items for sale at 17 Windley Street, Tennant Creek or on our webpage: www.papak.com.au.

Every dollar helps us in provide language resources to generations to come.

If you need help to get your children to school please ring the office on (08) 8962 3270 for assistance or drop in and see the team.

This article appeared in Tennant & District Times, 13 August 2021.