WAI! Kulila! Hey Listen Up!
World First online Pitjantjatjara language course now taking enrolments!
Sign up now at ngapartji.org and pass this msg on to all your friends, family and workmates!
It is with much excitement that the team of Ngapartji Ngapartji would like to invite you to enrol in the first ever intake for our online language course!
Taking its name from the Pitjantjatjara concept of reciprocity and exchange, Ngapartji Ngapartji – I Give You Something, You Give Me Something – is a long term inter-generational language arts project based in and around Alice Springs.
Members of the Pitjantjatjara community invite you to learn their language – which is one of the world’s oldest – through online stories, songs, animations and short films before seeing one of Australia’s deadliest new theatre works in Melbourne International Arts Festival later this year.
Pitjantjatjara is one of the many varieties of the ‘Western Desert’ languages spoken by around 3,000 people across the North Western parts of South Australia and adjacent areas of W.A and N.T. In light of the global trend in language loss, by engaging with the course and raising the awareness of the status of indigenous languages in Australia you are also directly supporting their maintenance and survival.
The course is in 26 parts – and we’ll be building it as you are taking it – made by young Pitjantjatjara people, their families and elders with support of BighART Arts Mentors.
Enrolment fees cover the entire 26 part language course, a ticket to the live stage production premiering in October, a special edition copy of the Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara dictionary from Institute of Aboriginal Development Press and go directly to supporting the project’s community development processes on the ground.
The show, by Writer/Director Scott Rankin, Spinifex man and principle performer Trevor Jamieson and the creative team of Big hART, reaches across time to tell the stories of Trevor’s family experience. Performed in Pitjantjatjara and English the show explores the impact of the cold war on the Spinifex Nation. Your tutors and members of the Pitjantjatjara community complete the ensemble cast of the touring production.
In the true spirit of the meaning of Ngapartji Ngapartji – I Give You Something, You Give Me Something – you are invited to exchange the time to hear deeply and clearly this personal experience of contemporary Australian life while keeping this beautiful language alive.
Courses for Perth audiences open in August and for Sydney audiences in November!
