NOONGAR LANGUAGE AND STORIES CELEBRATED WITH LAUNCH OF TWO NEW PICTURE BOOKS
Story by:
Allira Sinclair, Noongar Yamatji woman and student at Curtin University
Dylan Murphy, Wakka Wakka & Wemba Wemba man and student at Curtin University.
Two new books celebrating Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories have been launched by two highly celebrated Indigenous writers.
Professor Kim Scott is an acclaimed national and international Noongar writer inducted into the Western Australian Writers Hall of Fame, who is currently a professor and researcher at the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts at Curtin University.
He has worked extensively in Indigenous education and the arts and sits as a committee member for the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories group.
Dr Cass Lynch is a Koreng Wudjari Noongar woman who co-founded the Woylie Project, which focuses on printing Noongar stories and training community members to be presenters.
She is also a committee member of the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories group. Her PhD in Creative Writing is focused on Noongar stories that reference climate change, and she has been involved in the conservation of the trapdoor spider.
Kim Scott and Cass Lynch are introducing two new picture books being published as part of a project to revitalise the Noongar language. Photo: Allira Sinclair.
The books launched are in partnership between Curtin University and Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories, with support from the Australian Research Council.
The Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project have published picture books that tell creation stories attached to landmarks along the south coast of Western Australia.
The two publications launched at the event were Wirrawoorliny (Whirlwind) and Ngalak Yongka Miyak Koorliny (Visiting the Kangaroo-Moon Site).
Prof Scott and Dr Lynch shared parts of the stories in the Noongar language during the launch. Wirrawoorliny, a story passed down from matriarchs and shared within the family, teaches how connection to culture, Country and language can guide young people home. In the story, a young boy is burned on a fire and eaten by a djanak, a devil, then a whirlwind takes his ashes and rebuilds the boy.
They discussed how the stories were shared with the families connected to them, and as a group, they were all involved in the production of the picture books, with Cousin Monique Farmer illustrating Wirrawoorliny.
Although Prof Scott is the author, he has been passionate about drawing from a young age. A drawing of his, depicting a “little bunch of people jumping around a fire” in Dwoort Baal Kaat, was previously published in a picture book in the Noongar language.
Kim Scott showing the audience where a granite outcrop bears natural imprints that are a part of Ngalak Yongka Miyak Koorliny. Photo: Allira Sinclair.
He discussed how an important step in writing Ngalak Yongka Miyak Koorliny involved visiting the sites of the story with elders, seeing the marks in the rock where the kangaroo had lain. This story is about elders taking younger family members to an ancestral site where a resting kangaroo is surrounded by the phases of the moon and learning their connection to the sacred sites.
Dr Lynch discussed how personal the project was for her.
“It is a bit of a dream to work on picture books with my own family,” she said, also mentioning that during her degree she worked at a children’s bookshop and “knew there wasn't enough picture books in our language”.
Kim Scott talked about his experience out on Country searching for the sites connected to the stories.
“One time, we were driving along the South Coast singing this song and looking for a particular landmark in some old notes from the 1930s, a linguist had left. And we looked up, and there was this great big stone head looking down over us. And so, you like to think the song activated that process of discovery, and whether that's true or not, I don't know, but that's how it felt,” he said.
Cassie Lynch and Patrica Ryder embracing after Ryder introduced and thanked the two authors. Photo: Allira Sinclair.
Patricia Ryder is the Carrolup Engagement Advisor at John Curtin Gallery.
“It is privilege to have the Wirlomin language project around because it truly is empowering and it's reconnecting a lot of people back to country and culture, and that is that revitalisation of language and culture that is so important for us today,” she said.
Aunty Olivia Roberts and Aunty Iris Woods, two of the elders, are part of the Cultural Elders Reference Group for Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Inc. Photo: Allira Sinclair.
Aunty Iris is a teacher of Noongar language and was Coordinator for Noongar Language Teachers networking in Peel-Fremantle District Education. She is currently an adviser on the Board of Management of the Mandurah Youth Centre, a member of the City of Mandurah’s Aboriginal Advisory Group and is a member of the Wirlomin Cultural Elders Reference Group. Iris said she was grateful for the work being done to revitalise the Noongar language.
“For me, it's a blessing every day that we're doing stuff like this. It's putting us back on the map and saying, 'These people did matter. ' We're still survivors, even though it's a harsh country, and the language is just like a blessing for us.”
Aunty Olivia is a Wirliomin woman who has been an executive board member for the Southwest Aboriginal Land and Sea Council, Aboriginal Legal Services, Southern Aboriginal Corporation, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Alliance. In 2024 she was named Albany’s Senior Citizen of the Year.
“The most important thing is our family group, for them it is very important to do inter-generational training. We train our young people, as Kim said, by taking them back to the Country, teaching them the language, and teaching them about the story and the song. Yeah. They're all linked to the Dreaming and our cultural way of being.”
Ngalak Yongka Miyak Koorliny and Wirrawoorliny are available via UWA Publishing, along with the six other bilingual picture books produced by Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Inc.
The books are also available to listen to in Noongar and English, narrated by Scott and Lynch, via Wirlomin.