Terraglossia

1. The moving tide - an introduction

As recorded in the Secret Instructions for Lieutenant James Cook Appointed to Command His Majesty's Bark the Endeavour 30 July 1768, Cook had been charged with several secret orders from George III, including 'with the Consent of the Natives to take possession of Convenient Situations in the Country in the Name of the King of Great Britain. P1

Several years later, Captain Arthur Phillip sailed to what is now known as Australia with it ships comprising the First Fleet and set up a penal colony on 26 January 1788. Phillip had proposed to treat Aboriginal peoples well and with consideration, but as with the directions from King George III, many of the plans for the 'discovery' of this place had gone awry. I cannot help wondering what and how the thinking of those first new Australians, rejected and ejected from their own country so violently and transported to a place that had only become a solid reality in the awareness of most British people several years before, contributed to what would occur here. I cannot imagine the terror and the fear of that journey, but I do imagine that perhaps some of these deeply turbulent emotions made the violent aftermath of those landings possible. P2

It is not possible for a language that has evolved in one place, for one community of language speakers, to travel and operate well and with care, in a colonised community. Work must be done to ensure that language grows to encompass that new context and its new speakers in the fullness of their community. If that does not happen,

I believe that colonisation is continuing... P10

Inventing fridges and wearing watches

I think it became so much more complex with the 1835 proclamation by Governor Richard Bourke of terra nullius or no one's land, in response to John Batman's attempts to purchase land from the Wurundjeri in what is now known as Southern Victoria. P28

I have come to understand that the biggest untruth yet to be considered by this not so new country of Australia, is that we, the first occupiers, also have deep intellectual traditions that must be recognised in any attempt to engage respectfully, meaningfully and authentically. Terra nullius, and other words such as claiming, conquering, clearing. settling, civilising, invading and colonising, have created a narrative that has silenced and made invisible the knowledges that have grown and lived with this place for as long as we have done. P29

Before and still

If peoples who have lived by and with a communicative tradition for thousands of years

suddenly lose the use of that communication, without transition, the depth of the loss, beyond verbal languages, is massive and complex. The ways of understanding one another, the articulation of a place-based, grown way of engaging with the other living entities in that same shared environment, the ways of understanding practices and perpetuating the philosophical teachings - are all shattered. It is not by words alone that we communicate. P41

Old places and their yarning

And although there is nothing inherently wrong with what academia expects, it must recognise and accept that there are deep differences in ways of thinking, knowing, being and doing, ways of making meaning, which all depend on cultural constructs, that they are in no way deficient or less, and that they are as valid as Western ideas, traditions and ways.
P48/49

I had to follow a different research path because my self is not a Western self, and I believed there was the real danger of me perpetuating those same gaps in understanding the fullness of Aboriginal knowledge if I did not extend the boundaries to claim my Gudanji context.
P49

Terraglossia, not Terra nullius

A language that has grown in another place, for another people, which travelled here in 1770, surely cannot be expected to be sufficient to articulate more than 60,000 years of the evolution and development of Aboriginal ways. P54/5

Many a telling story

Secret English

That I was forced to indulge in the equivalent of a tantrum showed me the lack of respect for the work conducted by the authors of that paper and reinforced the frequent claim by Aboriginal Australians that we are one of the most researched groups in the world, often as the objects of study and rarely as the contributors. P70

The biggest consideration here lies in the organisation of the languages themselves. English is a binary language and Aboriginal languages are not. P77

Not being WEIRD

Western, Educated. Industrialised, Rich and Democratic:

This means that a considerable proportion of culturally diverse communities are not being represented or

articulated in significant volumes of research.

If Western researchers do not systematically critique their methods and analytical practices, the burden is on Aboriginal researchers to identify alternatives to WEIRD' research, and some First Nations Australian academics have contributed seminal works on this issue.
P81

The burden for Western researchers is to recognise that alternative truths exist. It is also important that they involve themselves in the use of such research in ways that recognise and do not appropriate the work.
P81

Mostly, it requires those from the dominant Australian culture to know that these requirements are not a rejection of Western thought but rather a need for a simple truth: that Aboriginal peoples not only have the right to be but also possess deep knowledge that can make good and necessary contributions to the wider Australian community:
P82

If our national conversation is not clear about the detailed differences that exist between Western notions and the meaning of those same terms within the Indigenous communities, those communities will again be marginalised, silenced and made invisible. There will, again, be an assumption of sameness, that Aboriginal and Western communities practise such concepts in the same ways.
P83

Mangaluwe- to talk

Many of the people I spoke to use the vocabulary of

SAE, but in ways that layer that vocabulary over Gudanji ways of thinking, knowing, being and doing. As well as enabling the continuation of Gudanji practice, these ways also ensure that Gudanji can articulate a response to the pervasive surveillance that results from being defined by and through the discourse of others...
P86

The next circle identifies 13,000 years, which is the extreme limits of what geographic researchers Patrick Nunn and Nicholas Reid claimed in 2016 to be the length of time that is possible for Aboriginal oral history to stretch back and recount a central 'truth'.
P88

Indeed, if 5000 years is ancient, is it not obvious that this word is not nearly enough to describe Aboriginal living with our lands for more than 60,000 years? And if modern English had its start 700 years ago, how can we imagine it is enough to define, articulate or explain the complex ways of knowing, being, doing and thinking that have enabled Aboriginal communities to live here so well for so long?
P89

![[Pasted image 20260309210632.jpg]]

Gudanji and Wakaja ways

listening to the more-than-voices

Respecting relationships

kin and skin

skin groups

![[Pasted image 20260310221752.jpg]]

this cyclic system of social organisation protected, for thousands of years, the small populations of Aboriginal peoples from genetic damage through marriages that were too close.

clans

Consist of larger family groups

Dreaming stories and songlines link my name, and therefore me, to the greater Gudanji context and geographic environment. Songlines represent the presence of kujiga, which immediately connects individuals to place.

So, for Gudanji, naming is a complex process of bringing an individual into pre-existing responsibility to Country sites, family groups and to others through skin, to even more others through clans and to still more others through our creation stories and songlines.
P115

And so here we are

I do not reject the English language. It has become mine, but it is not mine in the way that my first language is. I speak its vocabulary in ways that are shaped by the meaning- and sense-making ways of a Gudanji and Wakaja person. I do not speak poor English, merely an Australian version, as I suspect most other Australians, Aboriginal or otherwise, do.
P122/3