Sandra speaking Injinoo Ikya

From First Languages Australia, Sandra Sebasio speaks Injinoo Ikya, also called Uradhi, one of 300+ languages spoken by Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. Learn more: https://firstlanguages.org.au/. This video is from our partnership with First Languages Australia, an incredible organization run by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in defense of their linguistic diversity. Much like in the United States and Canada, the Australia government enforced a brutal campaign of forced assimilation between the 19th and 20th centuries, removing Indigenous children from their families and sending them to “boarding schools” where they were given English names and punished, often violently, for speaking their languages. As a result, the vast majority of the 300+ languages spoken by Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders are critically endangered or, as is the case with Ininoo Ikya (also called Uradhi), are dormant, meaning that no native speakers remain. However, a generation of Indigenous Australians is leading a language renaissance. In the Ininoo Ikya community, activists like Sandra have learned their ancestral language as adults in order to pass it on to the next generation. The speaker(s) featured herein have not explicitly agreed to distribute this video for reuse. For inquiries on licensing this video, please contact hello@wikitongues.org.