Being language: Roles, responsibility and respect in Ngaanyatjarra society

How you speak and what you talk about reveals much about your society and its worldview, how you manage knowledge, what you consider beautiful, and how you relate to others. Drawing on a large collection of recordings of verbal arts from the Western Desert region of Central Australia, Ellis will paint a lively picture of the multimodal communicative repertoires used by her Ngaanyatjarra/Ngaatjatjarra people. She, Green, Kral and Simpson will focus on the manner in which narrative practices reveal and instil core cultural values and impart knowledge to the next generation. This lecture will be followed by a performance from Nardi Simpson, Lucy Simpson and Jilda Andrews are three sisters who invoke their Yuwaalaraay country through a dynamic mix of audio, visual, text and language. Their work as standalone cultural practitioners is well established in various fields; Nardi as singer-songwoman with the groups Stiff Gins, Freshwater and the Spirit of Things Collective, Lucy as textiles designer and owner of the Gaawaa Miyay design company and Jilda’s research into museums and as a museum practitioner. When they come together as Biliirr (‘bill-ear’, black cockatoo), they offer audiences a gift of country through song that will leave you feeling like you’ve been on a journey.