Hindsight show on Jarlmadangah
Stop whatever you’re doing and go and listen to Hindsight on outstations. The link goes to the mp3 of the program. The program was based largely around Jarlmadangah (a Nyikina outstation in the Kimberley region, on Mt Anderson station) and provided an excellent set of resons whythe outstation movement is important and why homelands are not “cultural museums”, as Amanda Vanstone thinks. There was a bit of dodgy reasoning in a few places (for instance, I’d be very surprised indeed if some of the economic arguments presented were actually true - that, for example, homelands are a net contributor to the economy of remote areas - that is, that they raise more money than they cost) but that’s not the point.
You also get to listen to Annie Milgin on this program. She’s a health worker and does a lot of language work with Nyikina. The program didn’t mention language work very much, but Jarlmadangah seriously have their act together on this point.
August 24, 2006 at 9:53 am
I confess I’m too lazy to listen to an mp3 program, but I would read a transcript if they provided one (reason: transcripts can be skimmed, but audio files can’t easily). Can’t the provision of a transcript be somehow automated? Or is there a website that will run an mp3 through a speech recognition algorithm? I realize this is a hard problem, but a bad transcript with appropriate disclaimers would be better than nothing.
August 24, 2006 at 10:05 am
Google was doing transcripts, but I think they are only of TV programs. I’ll try running it through my voice recognition program tonight, but I suspect it’ll have a lot of trouble with the Aboriginal speakers.