Cirrus@Austlit

'The first adaption of a complete Shakespeare play entirely in one Australian Aboriginal language, this books track the passionate project of language recovery and restoration into a highly successful mainstage production.

'The play Hecate is a landmark work in both theatre and language restoration. The Noongar language of the southwest of Western Australia is a critically endangered language impacted by settler-colonialism and suppressed until the 1970s. This book contains the complete play, a glossary, and chapters outlining the process of creating and then producing a play onto a professional stage with a Noongar cast working as both language learners and performers, where song became their catalyst to success.

'Premiering to critical acclaim in Perth Festival 2020, Hecate is a ground-breaking and audacious adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth in the Noongar language and from a Noongar perspective. The project in its early stages involved the development and presentation of Sonnets in Noongar, a selection of sonnets as part of the World Shakespeare Festival at the Globe Theatre in 2012 in London. The original cast remain poised to take Hecate to the UK and complete the circle.

'This dazzling project is brought to life in this short book designed to inspire language recovery and restoration in Australia, in a period when serious attention is being paid to many endangered languages. It demonstrates the power of performance to build community strength.' (Publication summary)

'Turrbal, Yagera, thank you for caring for this land we meet on today. It is a big responsibility and what I consider a very human thing to do. When last here, for the AIATSIS research conference, I witnessed an impassioned local performance to welcome attendees. In the old days, we visitors might have been expected to perform in response. Although a number of Aboriginal people were there, many of us may not have had a song to share—at least not yet.

'I am Noongar, with a Noongar mother and white Australian father. I have a Noongar wife and son. My ancestral Country is far from here, along the southern coast of Western Australia. Here in Brisbane, our endangered Noongar language is strange and foreign. I speak about it in the hope that the things we are doing in the southwest might be useful to people here and elsewhere.

'It is an honour to be invited to present as part of the Academy’s auspicious 50th Symposium. This year’s theme ‘Humanising the Future’ resonates with my interest in the intersection between tradition and digital technology. This lecture is held in honour of Sir Keith Hancock, who contributed to the foundations of environmental history studies in Australia. Although his biographer Jim Davidson notes that Hancock ‘shared the general ignorance of the extent of Aboriginal resistance’, he rightly critiqued characterisations of Australia as untouched wilderness.1 This continent is an inherently peopled landscape, Country with a capital C—‘nourishing terrain’ as Deborah Bird Rose would put it—alive and intertwined with Aboriginal people and knowledge systems.2 Our longstanding and very current environmental crisis can be understood as not just the fault of flawed science and economics, but also a disconnection between culture and nature, between humans and landscapes.3 Although frequently overlooked in scientific research, factors supporting human connection to the environment such as story, language and song are key to people’s everyday wellbeing.4 Our future is dependent on Country. Things that most connect us humans to Country—like language, story and song—are crucial to our future.' (Introduction)

'In Australia, language and song are integral to maintaining Aboriginal knowledge systems. British colonisation and ensuing Australian government policies of assimilation have adversely impacted these knowledge systems, at least partially by functioning to dramatically diminish the vitality of many Aboriginal languages and song traditions. As a Noongar researcher motivated by community-oriented goals, I employ a multidisciplinary approach to enhance the revitalisation of the endangered Noongar language and its song traditions in the south coast region of Western Australia. This work draws on established methods from ethnomusicology and linguistics, engaging with community knowledge-holders and archival records to rebuild repertoire while increasing opportunities to gather together, sing and speak. While the processes developed to aid this endeavour may function as useful models for others involved in similar projects across the world, its aims are primarily oriented towards empowering the local community. Given the continued development of approaches to Indigenous research, this article will discuss the potential for language revitalisation, song and performance to expand available ways of knowing.' (Publication abstract)

'This article explores connections between history, emotion and Aboriginal song in the south of Western Australia. Songs performed in the Noongar language in the 19th and early 20th centuries provide insight into the emotional worlds of Western Australia’s past. Historical documentation reveals how Noongar sang to deal with rapid changes associated with colonisation, with song acting as a conduit for cultural resilience. Today, the Noongar language is endangered, and few people remember the old songs. Community aspirations to claim, consolidate and enhance cultural heritage have driven a collaborative process of translating, interpreting and revitalising some of this repertoire. Listening to and performing Noongar songs at community gatherings today stirs strong emotions, feelings of connection to the past and senses of both loss and hope. In this context, songs are also key to maintaining links to ancestors, language and a sense of community.' (Publication abstract)

'In a world where the Noongar language is spoken by all, a yarn about a Scottish king is retold.

'Join Yirra Yaakin, one of Australia’s leading Aboriginal performing arts organisations for Australia’s first large-scale Shakespeare production entirely in Noongar. 

'Hecate, queen of the witches, is usually omitted from productions of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Most directors are unsure of what to do with her. Here, she is at the heart of everything watching as Macbeth strives toward power at any cost, all the while knowing that order must be restored; that Country always trumps human ambition and greed.

'In 1833 colonist Robert Menli Lyon wrote in reference to Noongar people that ‘the whole of each tribe are bards’. This world premiere event puts those words to the test. Having spent years studying and reclaiming their endangered Noongar language, a star ensemble use this audacious adaptation as a springboard to showcase its poetic and expressive qualities.'

Source: Perth Festival.

'In a time before radio or even gramophones, songs were shared between Aboriginal groups at large social gatherings. Some songs were so popular they spread enormous distances.

'One such song known as Wanji-wanji has travelled some thousands of kilometres. Incredibly, the lyrics have remained unchanged over this distance and the past 150 years it has been sung.' (Introduction)

'An Indigenous prison requests show in Perth, Western Australia, Inside Out has emerged as a response to the disproportionately high incarceration rates of Indigenous people in the state and is the most popular show on the community broadcaster Noongar Radio, airing across twelve prisons with more than 270 requests per week. Incorporating interviews and analysis of language and music, this article will discuss how Aboriginal people in Western Australia use Inside Out as a shared communicative resource to assist in upholding their connections to family, community, and Country, connections that can be central to Aboriginal Australian social and emotional well-being but are most often impeded by incarceration. Using language and music—mostly country music—to enact Aboriginal cultural and social connectedness, Inside Out serves vital community concerns not addressed by commercial broadcasting, while also creating representations of Aboriginal culture for non-Aboriginal listeners.'

Source: Abstract.