The Australian Government will spend $11.9 million for a two year project to revive and maintain Australia’s Indigenous languages.

The Indigenous Languages and Arts program aims to showcase, protect and encourage participation in Indigenous artistic expression, strengthening pride in identity and culture through language.

Languages and the arts are essential to the wellbeing, culture and identity of this nation’s original inhabitants, and the government says its new funding will play an important role in maintaining those links.

The funding, which comes from the languages stream of the Indigenous Languages and Arts program, will support community-driven activities designed to address the erosion and loss of Indigenous languages across Australia.

The funds will be used for activities including multimedia programs, cataloguing and digitising language material, the production of stories, a language conference, development of dictionaries and other language resources, online language lessons and news in languages.

It will also enable Indigenous language centres and service organisations to provide professional development opportunities for Indigenous language workers.

For example, the How Do I Say Language Learning project will work with experts from the Indigenous Language Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico to upgrade the training resource, Miromaa, designed by Indigenous staff from the Arwarbukarl Cultural Resource Association to revive Indigenous languages.

More information and a full list of funding recipients are accessible here.