BACKGROUND

The Wiradjuri Nation covers the heart of NSW, and is the language of the people who occupied the area between Gilgandra in the North, Albury in the South, Mt York in the Blue Mountains in the East and Hay in West.

Research shows that there was one basic language, however, different smaller subgroups among Wiradjuri speakers had some words that belonged exclusively to their own clan. This helped them to distinguish their clan from others, there were also some slight variations between clans in the pronunciation of some sounds.

The Wiradjuri language gradually ceased being freely spoken as a result of government policies and the subsequent dispersion of people away from their families, clans and traditional areas.

The threat by the welfare authorities was that if people were caughtspeaking and teaching the language to their children then those children would be removed from their care and sent away, under the guise of "Allowing them to be educated to become Normal Australian Citizens".

By the 1980's the last known Wiradjuri speaker had passed away and the people were at a loss to retain it.

Pastor Cecil Grant a Wiradjuri Elder began teaching some of the Wiradjuri vocabulary to people in the southern part of Wiradjuri country, he passed the task of reclamation of the language to his younger brother Stan with approval of the Wiradjuri Council of Elders.

RECLAMATION BEGINS:

The Wiradjuri Language Development Project (WLDP) came as a result of the Wiradjuri Language Reclamation project in 1997, and is under the direction of Stan Grant Snr and Dr John Rudder an anthropologist who had a passion to assist the Wiradjuri people reclaim their language..

Since 1988 the Wiradjuri Council of Elders approved a standardised alphabet that could be used to represent the sound patterns of the language so it could be correctly pronounced. Lesson books, art books a basic grammer and a book of sentences were also developed from materials gathered from a wide range of sources.

Over the past 8 years people have become aware of the possibility of recovering the language that they thought was lost to them forever, enthusiasm for the task of reclamation has been building and it is now being used right across Wiradjuri country.

To date Two song books have been written and two CD's made of the lessons and songs.

NSW GOVERNMENT DECREE:

More recently the NSW Government decreed that Aboriginal languages would be taught in all NSW schools from kindergarten to year 10 with the option of continuing in years 11 and 12, these classes were not just available to Aboriginal students but open all who wanted to learn.

Forbes North Primary School, in the heart of Wiradjuri country has volunteered to pilot the introduction of Wiradjuri into their school.

The syllabus has been developed in such a way that each of the 70 plus languages that existed in NSW will potentially be taught in the parts of the State in which they were originally spoken. This officially commences in 2005 by which time the English to Wiradjuri/Wiradjuri to English Dictionary will be completed.