‘Should have been my birthright’ - the journey to reclaim a lost language

Kids being forcibly removed from their families, being denied your rations, even physical punishments.

Sometimes when we talk about the stolen generations or mission days, I feel like people think it's a thing of the past, something that happened a long time ago, but doesn't really affect us now.

But my own mum, Mangamba, she grew up on a mission.

That's how recent this history is.

A lot of our old people were silenced and punished for speaking language.

I've heard stories of our old people being children at the time and being hushed, like their parents were just trying to protect them, like, "Shh, don't speak language in front of the, the white fellas."

Earlier, I told you I'd been learning my language.

But what I didn't tell you was that there was something I wish I'd known before walking into the classroom.

That first night, I was full of excitement and nerves.

But later, when I was driving home with Mangamba, we were talking about the class and what we'd learned, and I realized I wasn't feeling great anymore.

I was mad and sad.

It took me a while, but I eventually figured out what was getting to me was that this wasn't how I wanted to be learning my language I didn't wanna be in my 30s, sitting in a classroom surrounded by other adults.

I wanted to learn as a kid, sitting in my lounge room.

I wanted to talk to my wabi, my maternal grandmother, or her sisters.

This feeling I was having, it wasn't unique.

Here's Jade McHugh again.

Well, really, it should've been your birthright.

It should've been our birthright to learn our mother tongue and for it to be our first language.

So I think that we've got every right to have a fire in our belly and to be upset about that.

Jade doesn't think this frustration is restricted to when you first learn language.

It's a phenomenon that can occur throughout every stage of language reclamation.

Our Ngarrindjeri have got some beautiful resources that wouldn't have been able to be put together if it wasn't for missionaries that recorded our language back long ago.

And I get very bittersweet feelings around that, too.

Those recordings have been really, really helpful for us as learners today because a lot of us need that visual or the grammar.

But I get really angry about that, too.