Dhudhuroa is an Aboriginal language of North-east Victoria. Due to the impacts of colonisation, Dhudhuroa is currently not spoken as a first language. The language is however being taught in several Kindergartens and Schools across Dhudhuroa country.
RUIL member Bill Forshaw has been working to support Dhudhuroa teaching and learning and ongoing language revival efforts since 2022. As part of the Dhudhuroa language team, Bill has supported a series of on-country language workshops bringing together language teachers and Dhudhuroa descendants. These workshops have allowed the team to share their practice with each other and undertake professional learning. Together the team have learned about Dhudhuroa sounds and spelling, morphology (word parts) and sentence types. This work has also allowed the team to strengthen Welcome and Acknowledgement of Country texts. These collaborative efforts have sparked interest with the wider school communities who are eager to learn more about Dhudhuroa language and culture. These meetings have been generously supported by an Indigenous Knowledge Institute Community Engagement Grant, RUIL, Dumu Balcony Café, Beechworth Montessori School, Harrietville Primary School and Bright P-12 College.
The team has recently been successful in gaining funding from First Languages Australia to support the creation of language learning resources, the Indigenous Knowledge Institute to support research into the structure of Dhudhuroa verbs and the Language Data Commons of Australia to support the transcription of language manuscripts in Nyingarn.
The team hopes to grow participation of Dhudhuroa people in the program. We will be expanding learning opportunities in this area in 2024. The Dhudhuroa Language Team with the support of RUIL are looking forward to continuing to learn more about Dhudhuroa language and being able to teach language to a growing number of students!
Kylie Giltrap, Larissa Hume, Thaedra Frangos, Bill Forshaw, Jen Mason, Katrina Ciolli, Sue Joyce, Bec Crawley and Mica Corscadden at a Dhudhuroa language workshop in 2023.