A near-extinct Aboriginal language has been resurrected by a determined group of Indigenous Australians in the Wimmera.
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There are only about 12 speakers of Wergaia remaining, a language of the Wotjobaluk traditional owners near Horsham.
One of those, Kylie Kennedy-Climton, spoke in Ballarat as part of NAIDOC Week celebrations at Child and Family Services on Friday.
Mrs Kennedy-Climton said she first studied the language a decade ago following native title decisions.
“It is about getting an insight into our culture,” she said. “We can see our ancestors worldview and what was important to them through language.”
The theme for the NAIDOC Week was Our Languages Matter, in recognition of the continued loss of the 120 remaining indigenous languages spoken in Australia.
That number has already dropped significantly from the 250 languages that were spoken before European settlement.
Now Mrs Kennedy-Climton will lead a push to teach more people in the Wimmera the Wergaia language and keep it alive.
A workshop is at Horsham’s Sawyer Park on Sunday, July 23 from 11am to 2pm.
“There is a group of us who want to have the language learnt by more people in the community,” she said.
Mrs Kennedy-Climton said there were difficulties in relearning a language.
“We have lost a lot our different languages as well,” she said.
“It isn’t like learning French, it is not like learning a living language.”
