Ngarinyman Dictionary Launch and IYIL Public Lecture

This is a free, public event.

To celebrate the UNESCO International Year of Indigenous Languages, AIATSIS, QUT and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL) are pleased to invite you to the launch of the Ngarinyman to English Dictionary by Rachel Perkins.

Ngarinyman is an Aboriginal language of the Northern Territory. The dictionary is the first in the series of dictionaries published by AIATSIS’s publishing arm Aboriginal Studies Press.

The launch will be followed by the International Year of Indigenous Languages Public Lecture by Daniel Browning.

The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues report that 40 per cent of the estimated 6,700 languages spoken around the world are in danger of disappearing, with the majority of these being indigenous languages, putting the cultures and knowledge systems to which they belong at risk.

Buy the Ngarinyman Dictionary

Daniel Browning is an Aboriginal journalist, radio broadcaster, documentary maker, sound artist and writer. Currently, he produces and presents Awaye!, the Indigenous art and culture program on ABC RN, a specialist

radio network of Australia's national broadcaster. Awaye! surveys contemporary Indigenous cultural practice across the arts spectrum. A visual arts graduate, Daniel is also a widely-published freelance arts writer.

He is a former guest editor of Artlink Indigenous, an occasional series of the quarterly Australian contemporary arts journal. He is the curator of Urban Theatre Projects’ Blak Box, an immersive sound pavilion which premiered in 2018 at Barangaroo on the western foreshore of Sydney Harbour. He studied English and Art History at the University of Queensland before graduating with a degree in visual arts from the Queensland University of Technology. Daniel is a descendant of the Bundjalung and Kullilli peoples of far northern New South Wales and south-western Queensland.

Rachel Perkins is a member of the Arrernte nation whose lands surround Alice Springs and the Kalkadoon people from the Mount Isa region. Rachel has served on a number of federal agencies including Screen Australia, the Australian Film Commission, and the Australian Film Television and Radio School. She was a founding board member of NITV, which she was instrumental in establishing. She has also served on the boards of various Aboriginal organisations and industry associations, including Bangarra Dance Theatre.

She currently serves on the board of the Australian Heritage Commission. Her company Blackfella Films, established in 1993, is a leader in the creation of Indigenous content, including the series First Contact, Redfern Now, First Australians, Ready For This and its latest production DNA Nation. Her work as director includes documentaries such as Freedom Ride and the more recent Black Panther Women as well as movies Bran Nue Dae, One Night the Moon, Mabo and the upcoming film Jasper Jones.

She also works in the cultural sector, directing festivals, such as the Yeperenye Festival for the Centenary of Federation. She researched and published The Black Book, a director of Indigenous people working in the cultural sector. In more recent times she has focussed on the development of Arrernte culture, the first project being an Arrernte Women’s Camp, which recorded and revived the repertoire of Arrernte women’s traditional musical heritage.