Bringing the Gamilaraay language back from the brink

Priscilla Strasek is an Indigenous Gamilaraay Yuwaalaraay woman from Lightning Ridge in New South Wales who is on a mission to help bring the native language of her people - Gamilaraay - back from the brink of extinction. Gamilaraay is an Indigenous Australian language from the mid-northwest of NSW and is currently the focus of a regeneration project. Ms Strasek is one of more than 15 students who have enrolled in an intensive summer course teaching the Gamilaraay language at the inaugural Indigenous Language Summer School co-sponsored by The Australian National University (ANU). She hopes to take what she learns in the course to help teach others back in her own community. "It's our language and it's very important to get people speaking it again," Ms Strasek said. "I have been involved with Gamilaraay language for many years and am extremely excited to have an opportunity to participate in this course and have it contribute towards my degree." The course is one of very few Indigenous language programs run at university level in Australia. Dr John Giacon of the ANU School of Literature Languages and Linguistics has been teaching Gamilaraay since 2006.