Last speaker of Thiinma uses music to keep language alive
89-year-old uncle Peter Salmon is the last remaining native speaker of Thiinma, a language of the First Nations people from the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. The award-winning musician is trying to preserve it through song, in a bid to keep it alive for generations to come.
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00:00 Uncle Peter's salmon is telling stories of birds flying in the sky, in a language on
00:12 the brink of extinction.
00:17 It's part of a song recording session preserving these words and a culture nearly erased.
00:24 It made me about ten years younger when I heard my mother's and grandfather's language.
00:38 Really made me very happy about it.
00:42 Uncle Peter grew up in the upper Gascoigne where he learned English from station workers.
00:47 At home his mother taught him his own language, Thien-Ma.
00:52 His sisters were taken away so he was the only sibling to learn the ancient language.
00:57 It was the welfare days and they come around to get a lot of kids off the station to put
01:04 them in the mission.
01:07 And yeah, that's where we wasn't allowed to speak our language.
01:14 In the two centuries since European colonisation, more than half of the languages spoken by
01:19 First Nations people have been silenced.
01:22 Communities across Australia are now working to reawaken them.
01:26 Uncle Peter Salmon's language saving work was recognised last year when his band won
01:31 the WA Music Song of the Year award.
01:34 At 89 years old he's planning to release more songs.
01:39 (Laughter)
01:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]