Conceptualizing Noongar Song

Abstract

As of 2011, an estimated 669,900 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people accounted for 3 per cent of Australia's total population (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2015). Of that population, over 30,000 people from a uniquely large urban/rural area in the southwest of Western Australia—including the author of this article—identify as Noongar (also spelled Nyungar). This makes Noongar one of the largest Aboriginal cultural groups in Australia (SWALSC 2009; see figure 1); and yet, the Noongar language is critically endangered, with just 369 speakers acknowledged in the 2011 Australian census (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2015). Noongar language is not unique in this regard; the most recent National Indigenous Languages Survey indicates that only “around 120” of more than two hundred Aboriginal languages are still spoken and that “about 13 can be considered strong” (Marmion, Obata, and Troy 2014:xii). Music traditions, often strongly tied to language, are disappearing too: approximately 98 per cent of Aboriginal musical traditions have been lost since colonization (Corn 2012:240). As is the case with most of Aboriginal Australia, traditional Noongar music is primarily vocal, featuring lyrics in the Noongar language. This implies an inextricable link between Noongar language and Noongar song traditions, a co-dependency that is critical for the vitality of both.

Archaeology in 2022: Counter‐myths for hopeful futures

“…Black and Indigenous storytelling modalities that are spiraling, counterfactual, ironic, reversed, or otherwise unorthodox (see Whyte, 2018) are dismissed as speculative, impractical, and inimical to disciplinary progress. This colonial temporality denies Indigenous concepts of time that interpenetrate in complex ways and are frequently intergenerational, so the past and the future are intimately connected through people, landscape, and things (Barwick, 2023;Bracknell, 2023;Hernández-Castillo, 2022;Porsanger and Virtanen, 2019, 292-93). Currently, as the world faces increasing threats from climate disaster, war, and population displacement and hostility, we find hopeful alternatives in Indigenous knowledge systems, such as the call to center "care" in archaeology (cf.…”

Hecate

“…Sadly, past government policies actively suppressed the Noongar language. As many community members attest, our elders were flogged for using it (Bracknell 2016).…”

“…Still, the Noongar language is rarely heard strung together in full sentences. Building on millennia of Noongar performance traditions (Bracknell 2017), and more recent performance history (Haebich 2018), Hecate is the first full work of Western-style theatre presented entirely in the Noongar language. More than being a significant artistic achievement, presenting Shakespeare in Noongar has provided a very rare opportunity for Noongar people and the general public to actively engage with the Noongar language in a variety of ways.…”

Reanimating 1830s Nyungar songs of Miago

“…4 (1993) Music, Dance and the Archive performances in the nineteenth century suggests that a range of Nyungar singing practices -and even ceremony associated with maintaining landscapes and kinship -were openly practised and sustained despite the presence of colonists. 24 In the twentieth century, entrenched settler colonisation of Nyungar lands, assimilation policies and an imposed emotional regime inhibited most speaking and singing in the Nyungar language. 25 Up until the early 1970s, access to human rights for Nyungar people inherently depended on avoiding overt public cultural expressions such as song and language.…”