Community & Remembrance
Term 3
The Importance Of Country & Place
ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE
Language is extremely important to the Aboriginal peoples. Languages carry cultural knowledge, so the loss of a language means the loss of a culture , of Aboriginal people's connections to their ancesters.
''The important thing about language and what it means is that language contains the essence of our ancestors, every word comes from place identifies people and links to the land country, the dreaming: they are all inherent in language, therefore it means the people, the land, everything. ''Yolngu Elder Laurie Baymarrwangga
- Explain the importance of language to the Aboriginal people in your own words
Language is important to the Aboriginal people because if they lost their language they would lose there personality and their whole culture and feel like a nobody.
- use the interactive map to locate and identify the local language group
The local language group for the illawarra is woiworung
PLACE NAMES
The Aboriginal name for Shellharbour has been recorded as both Yerrowah (meeting place), and Wonwin, place where there were big fish). The European name Shellharbour refers to the large quantites of shells found in Aboriginal middens along the foreshore in the early to mid 19th century. Due to the mining of the shells in the mid 19th century for the production of lime these vast middens no longer remain.