Kaya

Thank you for a link to discussions that took place, for which I wasnt aware of.  Noongar and English as I have explained have significant cross over, such that english in Western Australia uses many words the two languages blur together.  Additionally for many concepts including counting, measuring of time, there are no noongar comparatives like wise many words carry both a positive, a negative and plural meanings dependent on use.  I know you would like to see to more Noongar language and these will come with community growth. The incubator setup has become a barrier to wider participation within a community where digital literacy is also english dependent. The Noongar community has already showen great trust and good faith in working with us, its our turn to reciprocate before we are at an impasse who's negative impact will have a long lasting impediment to Australian Indigenous knowledge being shared by Australian Indigenous communities.  

What I find disappointing is that not one member of the language committee has made any attempt to actually contact myself or any other nys contributor to get an understanding of the language, the culture, and the history.    Unfortunately despite many attempts to bring the decision makers to Australia to gain an understanding of has continually fallen on deaf ears. I find it rather surprising that the language committee sits in judgement of a community, its knowledge, its culture, its worth, and whether it contributes to the sum of all knowledge without ever making an in person visit.


In the four years ago this project started with a question to Australian Research Council of "Why was there no Noongar Wikipedia", the initial response from the WMF was to engage lawyers and threaten the people who asked. The ARC funded the Noongar community through 2 Universities.  That community was hit hard by the WMF response, as a testament to the very koort and weirn of the noonagr  they didnt give up.  They found local wikipedians and I decide to help answer their question with "because no one had tried".  Wikimedia Australia supported this work, we grew it from multiple wikis hosted by WMAU into the incubator, along the way we built a community of editors and helped develop some very skilled contributors.  Personally I unexpectedly embarked on a journey that despite growing up and living in Western Australia I saw in the depths of some the worse depravity created on basis of chosen ignorance and exercising of power.   

We are custodians of knowledge, our role is to share the sum of all knowledge to ensure that that knowledge is passed down to future generations.  We are not here to decide which cultures knowledge will be cast aside even if they live, speak, and write in two worlds.  We are definitely not here to stand in judgement over culture because it doesnt comply with the way in which European cultures expect, thats been tried here for the last 200 odd years it doesnt work.   Our biggest problem with Noongar language is that which was created by Europeans where because individuals came from different cultures, British, French, German, Spanish, Italian each recorded noongar as they wrote their own language and none ever look at the whole of the community.  WMF has been able to pick the low fruit with languages so far, I ask you to start picking the fruit higher up the tree.  We havent come to the WMF or the language committee to beg to be accepted, we are inviting you to joins us to learn, to understand , to experience the true purpose of knowledge sharing.  To under take a journey into cultures that have been sharing their knowledge freely for over 50,000 years and learn what it means to be custodians knowledge for future generations. 

Katitjiny-ang yennar
   knowledge belongs to all

On 3 April 2018 at 22:39, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
Hi Gideon,

You write: "we use a lot of english".

That is a major understatement. I didn't count precisely, but my impression is that it's more than 90% English. That's not "a lot of English", that's almost exclusively English.

This incubator is not a draft for a Wikipedia in the Nyungar language. This is a draft for a wiki website with articles about the Nyungar people and culture, and it's mostly written in the English language.

The existence of such a website is legitimate. It is even desirable for the Wikimedia movement to host such a site, given the known practical challenges of writing about non-Western cultures in Wikipedia in English and other major languages.

The problem is that even though it's legitimate and desirable, it is just not something that the Language committee can approve because it is not similar to any other wiki site in the Wikimedia family of sites.

A new kind of site could be created for this, but this is a discussion that must happen beyond the Language committee. The WMF board and the wide Wikimedia community must be involved in discussing this. When such a proposal is made in the right place, I may support it as a Wikimedia community member, but I cannot support it as the Language committee member.

All of the above was already discussed on this mailing list publicly in February. You can find the archive here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/langcom/2018-February/thread.html .



--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

2018-04-02 8:53 GMT+03:00 Gnangarra <gnangarra@wikimedia.org.au>:
Kaya

Well were to now, the noongar community met in good faith every condition asked of it during 2017 includinng those asked by the committee while I was in Berlin, In December we posted the final request after completing the required translations.  Following those request we received what can politely be describe as poor responses.  

 I wont be in Berlin this year to again find out what new hoops we will be required to jump through.  I can say the outcome has been very poor, there has been no existent communication from the committee as a committee.  At this stage does the WMAU abandon  capturing 50,000 years of Australian Indigenous knowledge from across 300 countries in their languages.  

The ball must now rest with the language committee because there is no way I could take what little comment we have received back to the wider Noongar community who daily deal with racism, knowledge appropriation, and being dismissed.   

The greatest lesson at the moment for Australian Indigenous knowledge is dont engage with Wikimedia Foundation, because despite them acting good faith the outcomes will be no different to past experiences.  

So why did we work with Noongar
  • they wanted to work with us, ie language community driven
  • its one of the largest language groups
  • it has a clearly defined country
  • it is supported by 5 Universities
  • its the most influential Indigenous languages and culture on any Australian community with the greatest uptake of indigenous words into the locally spoken english so much so that both the language spoken and the Western Australia culture is uniquely identifiable from the rest of Australia.
  • its spoken in some form by 25.m despite the statistics
Our challenges was in knowing that there actually 14 associated dialects, that they have spellings directly impacted by the european who recorded them.  My process has always been not to use WMF as means of enforcing one dialect over another, hence why we use a lot of english in the learning and a reluctance to do further translations because each choice should come when the community is doing it through consensus not at the hand of myself....


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Gideon Digby
Vice President - Wikimedia Australia
M: 0434 986 852

Wikimedia Australia Inc. is an independent charitable organisation which supports the efforts of the Wikimedia Foundation in Australia. Your donations keep the Wikimedia mission alive.



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Gideon Digby
Vice President - Wikimedia Australia
M: 0434 986 852

Wikimedia Australia Inc. is an independent charitable organisation which supports the efforts of the Wikimedia Foundation in Australia. Your donations keep the Wikimedia mission alive.