Language in the Land: Pitjantjatjara

About Language in the Land: Pitjantjatjara

Language in the Land series:

This year IAD Press honours its 50th anniversary and the International Year of Indigenous Languages by updating its learner’s guides and dictionaries of central Australian Aboriginal languages. Co-sponsored by IAD Press, the Language in the Land series will explore what we can learn about central Australia through the languages spoken by the People of the Land. Every Aboriginal language came from its land, and tells about the relationships among ancestral stories, places and families today. You are invited to join in our ‘cultural conversations’ on ways language learning can help you more carefully listen to this place.

Language in the Land: Pitjantjatjara

When a language is in decline, it has been observed that the first words to disappear are those that express complex emotions. For the past five years, a group of senior Pitjantjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra women have been working to recover ‘words for feelings’ that have slipped from usage. Join members of the innovative Uti Kulintjaku Project to talk about lost words and what their retrieval might bring to a better understanding of mental health from a different cultural perspective.