Karajarri Traditional Lands Association RNTBC

23/10/2026

23/10/2026

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21/10/2026

This week on the Mongabay Newscast, Samantha Murray, CEO of the Indigenous Desert Alliance, joins the program to discuss the IDA’s recent nomination for an Earthshot Prize. The alliance is a network of 70 ranger teams across the Australian desert, covering 270 million hectares (667 million acres),...

21/10/2026

**THE MISSIONS TRIED TO CHANGE THE WAY ABORIGINAL PEOPLE LIVED. THEIR LANGUAGES SURVIVED THROUGH THE PEOPLE WHO CARRIED THEM.**

Across Australia, missions, government reserves and institutions disrupted the transmission of Aboriginal languages.

In many places, Aboriginal people were pressured or forbidden to speak their own languages. Children were educated in English, families were separated, and people from different language groups were sometimes brought together under systems that prioritised colonial control.

But languages did not simply disappear when people were forced into these institutions.

**FAMILIES KEPT WORDS, STORIES AND KNOWLEDGE ALIVE.**

Parents, grandparents and other relatives continued to pass on language where circumstances allowed. Some people used their languages privately or in community settings. Others retained words, names, expressions and knowledge even when children could no longer learn the language in the same way as earlier generations.

The experiences differed from place to place. Some languages continued to be spoken across generations; others became dormant and later required extensive community-led reclamation.

**OLD RECORDS BECAME NEW TOOLS.**

In South Australia, Lutheran missionary Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann recorded thousands of Barngarla words in the nineteenth century.

More than a century later, Barngarla people used historical language records as one resource in their community-led language reclamation work.

A dictionary created in a colonial setting became a tool for reconnecting people with their language.

That is not the same as uninterrupted transmission—but it is another form of language survival: recovering knowledge, rebuilding learning resources and bringing a language back into everyday use.

**LANGUAGE REVIVAL IS HAPPENING NOW.**

Communities are developing dictionaries, books, language classes, recordings and digital learning tools. Elders, language workers, teachers and families are helping younger generations learn languages that colonial policies placed under enormous pressure.

The scale of this work is significant.

AIATSIS reported in its Fourth National Indigenous Languages Survey update that **177 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages were spoken or used**, and **113 were being revived, revitalised or reawakened**. These figures include both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages and reflect the survey's reported status categories.

The numbers represent different circumstances: a language spoken continuously by a community is not the same as one being reawakened from historical records.

Both forms of work matter.

A language carries more than vocabulary. It can hold place names, relationships, ecological knowledge, humour, history and ways of understanding Country that cannot always be translated neatly into English.

**THE LANGUAGES SURVIVED BECAUSE PEOPLE CONTINUED TO VALUE THEM. TODAY, COMMUNITIES ARE STRENGTHENING THAT LEGACY ON THEIR OWN TERMS.**

AUSSIE AI LENS
Australia. Analysed.

20/10/2026

THE WOMEN WHO HELPED BUILD AUSTRALIA'S PEARLING INDUSTRY WERE ALMOST WRITTEN OUT OF ITS HISTORY.

Before Broome became an international pearling centre, Aboriginal people across northern Australia's coasts had collected and traded pearl shell for generations.

When commercial pearling expanded in Western Australia during the 1860s, Aboriginal divers became essential to the industry. Historical accounts specifically noted the underwater abilities of Aboriginal women.

They could dive without breathing apparatus, searching the seabed for pearl shell used to manufacture buttons and other goods for international markets.

But remarkable skill did not mean fair treatment.

Pearling operators depended on Aboriginal knowledge of coastal waters, shell beds and diving. As the industry expanded, Aboriginal men, women and children were recruited—and sometimes forcibly taken or deceived into labour.

Divers faced dangerous conditions, exhausting work and limited protection from abuse. In some documented arrangements, remuneration consisted largely of food, to***co, clothing and blankets rather than meaningful cash wages.

The colonial response also restricted women's participation.

In 1871, Western Australian pearling legislation prohibited women from diving. The law was presented as protective, but its enforcement and effects need to be understood within a wider industry shaped by racial control, labour exploitation and competition for workers.

As commercial operators moved into deeper waters, equipment and labour arrangements changed. By the late 1880s, hard-hat diving had become increasingly prominent in major pearling centres, while Aboriginal people continued to contribute to the industry in other roles.

The work was not only underwater. Aboriginal workers also collected shell in shallow waters, handled and cleaned shell, and contributed to the coastal economies that supported pearling settlements.

Women’s experiences varied across locations and periods, and the surviving records do not allow every role or wage arrangement to be reconstructed precisely.

But the broader history is clear: Aboriginal knowledge and labour helped make commercial pearling possible, while the profits and historical recognition were distributed unequally.

These women were not a footnote to the pearling industry.

Their skill, labour and knowledge of Sea Country were part of its foundation.

AUSSIE AI LENS | Australia. Analysed.

20/10/2026

Many colonials in the Pilbara, and later in the West Kimberley, established their wealth in the wool industry.

Some shearing sheds were worked entirely 'by the blacks', under the colonial managers and their overseers. In the remote areas white men were difficult to obtain and required wages and Aboriginal labor was deemed a necessity. The wool was taken to the nearest port by bullock wagon with the drivers also being Aboriginal people.

The colonial squatters of north-west Australia had destroyed the First Nation's people's meat, grain and fruit food sources and replaced them with sheep, so they were relatively easy enough to round up to be used as slaves under colonial government laws.

In the Kimberley pioneer flocks of around 1908 at the 'Upper Liveringa' sheared 120,000 sheep, 'Noonkanbah' 90,000 and the 'Lower Liveringa' 60,000. From Derby to the Fitzroy Crossing, a distance of 200 miles, the country was considered most suitable for sheep, with the fleeces being light, averaging 31b and the wool was fine.

Payment for Aboriginal labor was the rations which consisted of flour, sugar, to***co and tea. A shearing tally was kept in the stations, and for shearing over 50 'jumbucks' a day the Aboriginal shearer would receive an extra 'stick' of to***co.

Later when the price of wool went down the sheep in Pilbara and Kimberley region, the sheep were replaced with cattle and that hasn't changed since, due the cattle destroying the fences that costed far too much to rebuild new ones considering the great distances required, without slave labour.

The Pastoral strike, sometimes referred to as the "Blackfellas Eureka", starting in 1946 and lasted until 1949, making it the longest strike in Australia's history. m

More about the strike: (Sovereign Union) https://bit.ly/3vjbPFe

19/10/2026

19/10/2026

19/10/2026

17/10/2026

Dingoes play a vital ecological role in the Great Sandy Desert, saving endangered species from feral cats and foxes.