Overall summary
The three National Indigenous Languages Surveys completed from 2005 to 2019 show that the health and strength of Indigenous languages is under increasing threat. For thousands of years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people spoke Indigenous languages. In just over two centuries, over half of these languages have been silenced. We must take urgent action now to stop this decline.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages belong to their communities. Indigenous people have the right to determine the needs and priorities of their languages. However, they do not shoulder all the responsibility for maintaining and strengthening their languages. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the custodians of uniquely Australian cultural heritage. All Australians can support efforts to preserve and renew Indigenous languages, while remembering that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have sovereign control of their languages.
NILS3 showed the commitment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to their languages. Communities are working to reawaken over 31 languages. Language reawakening benefits individual, family and community wellbeing. Speaking about the publication of the Kaurna dictionary, Kaurna woman Taylor Power-Smith said:
This is the greatest inheritance I’ll ever receive and I feel so strongly that fluency will be ours, and our babies will eventually be able to speak in our mother’s tongue. (Taylor Power-Smith in Marchant 2021)
NILS3 shows that most Indigenous languages spoken today are only spoken by older generations. Trevor Stockley writes:
The language fire in many communities today is not a blazing fire but resembles a quiet fire of just warm coals. The time for action is now, while there are still some coals. There is an urgent need to work with Elders who still remember how to blow on those old coals to re-kindle the language fire, to give warmth and comfort to their people, their families and their children and to hear Aboriginal languages on country again. (Stockley 2010, p. 108)
Right now, communities have the opportunity to work with Elders who still remember language. All Australians have a responsibility to support communities to practice self-determination in relation to their language goals.