Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine the ontological and epistemological fear that many last speakers of Indigenous languages feel when faced with significant language loss. It will reflect on how, when faced with such circumstances, people maintain connections to places of cultural importance.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is dedicated to an exploration of Indigenous language loss and how people think and feel about this in regards to a continuing and ongoing relationship to their homelands. The rate of language loss in Australia is rapid and ongoing, of the original 275 languages only 20 are now considered strong with all generations in a community speaking them. The loss of language through ongoing coloniality has created a vast network of epistemic violences across Australia. There are issues here associated with language documentation, the reduction of oral traditions to print texts and the place of new languages such as Kriol to hold the original ontological and epistemological depths of the old languages. This paper explores my own 35 years of research amongst some of the last speakers of Indigenous languages in Australia and speaks to their day-to-day concerns in regards to future generations of non-speakers of the original languages.