Thread by @GJosephRoche

For NAIDOC, Channel 10 did the weather using Indigenous place names. Let’s have a look at some of the reactions. (CW - racism). 1/n

Some bloke I’ve never heard of and won’t link to decided to write a blog post about the use of Indigenous place names on the weather map. Here’s the post in full. Snide, condescending, ignorant and hateful. 2/n

The rest of the reactions here are from a Twitter thread sharing the original blog post. The point of sharing them is to demonstrate the pushback that exists to the use of Indigenous languages in public in Australia. 3/n

Next year is the start of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. If First Nations languages here are going to flourish and thrive, we need to address the widespread hostility towards them, as part of a broader program of reclamation and maintenance. 4/n

What does that hostility look like? Like this. Indigenous languages and made up. Garbage. 5/n

Using Indigenous languages will confuse… racists. 6/n

Presenting these two together. Please don’t tell them where the ‘English’ alphabet comes from. 7/n

Variation on a theme that portrays Indigenous language revitalization as fake and insincere. 8/n

Presenting this tweet and the profile together without comment. 9/10

Just belittling Indigenous languages and the people who hold them dear. 10/n

Anyway, I won’t post any more. You get the idea. Whenever Indigenous languages are used in public in Australia there is always horrific backlash like this. 11/n

This backlash follows predictable patterns and regurgitates the same ideas. You can read about them here in this piece that @JakelinTroy and I wrote.

languageonthemove.com/indigenous-lan…

And when the International Decade of Indigenous Languages starts next year, if you want Indigenous languages to thrive - fight racism. /end

For previous examples of backlash against the use of Indigenous languages in public in Australia, see here:

https://mobile.twitter.com/GJosephRoche/status/1333274677091868676

When it was the national anthem sung in an Indigenous language, people reacted positively:

https://mobile.twitter.com/GJosephRoche/status/1336564126563270658

But most often the reactions to Indigenous languages in Australia are just plain racist:

https://mobile.twitter.com/GJosephRoche/status/1356547917167751170