Collection report--Audiovisual Archive.

Jeffrey, David

Over the past 18 months, the Audiovisual Archive has received some remarkable collection material from Amee Glass and Dorothy Hackett. 'The Ngaanyatjarra Language Project' is the result of more than 45 years living and working with the Ngaanyatjarra people during their time at the Warburton Mission.

The United Aborigines Mission sent Amee and Dorothy to Warburton in 1963, initially to undertake literacy work but which later encompassed Bible translation work commenced by Wilf Douglas and Noel Blythe. In 1966 they received an AIAS grant to enable them to take a number of Pitjantjatjara people to the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) grammar workshop in Brisbane over the summer of 1966-67. This resulted in the publication of Pitjantjatjara texts and grammar. Amee notes, however, that 'we later discovered that the people didn't consider [their language] to be a dialect of Pitjantjatjara but a separate language known as Ngaanyatjarra'.

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Over the years Amee and Dorothy taught many people to read Ngaanyatjarra. During the 1970s Amee was a consultant linguist to the bilingual program at Warburton School, while Dorothy taught an annual three-week Ngaanyatjarra language learning course at the Western Australian Institute of Technology.

Working closely with more than 30 Ngaanyatjarra speakers, Amee and Dorothy translated the New Testament into Ngaanyatjarra. This was published by the Bible Society in 1991. Since that time they have worked on a number of publications including The Ngaanyatjarra and Ngaatjatjarra to English Dictionary, The Ngaanyatjarra Learner's Guide and The Ngaanyatjarra Language Course. It was in recognition for some of this work that both Amee and Dorothy were made Members of the Order of Australia in 2006.

Aside from the impressive collection of language recordings thus far deposited, there are also tapes of women's traditional songs and dance, Christian songs set to semi-traditional tunes and a Christmas Pulapa recorded at Lajumanu. Amee and Dorothy also deposited their respective photographic collections. Together this material consists of more than 1000 colour slides documenting the recording process and the people they worked with, general community and mission activities, as well as traditional practices on Ngaanyatjarra lands such as hunting/gathering of bush tucker and ceremonies. The photographs were predominantly shot using Kodachrome film and are in excellent condition. The accompanying documentation is both extensive and informative, including the names of the people featured in the images. The entire collection represents an invaluable resource for current and future generations of Ngaanyatjarra people and is a most impressive addition to the AIATSIS Audiovisual Archive.

'We felt that to finish our work we needed to ensure that all of the valuable material that we have collected over the 45 years we have worked with the Ngaanyatjarra people should be safely deposited in a secure place' (Amee Glass, June 2009).