Producing ’My weekend with Pop’

My Weekend with Pop: Stories in Aboriginal Languages is a series of short illustrated bilingual stories and educational resources, celebrating the diversity of Aboriginal languages in NSW.

The resources – which include a digital story book and curriculum resources for schools and teachers - were developed in partnership with speakers from five different Aboriginal language groups (and NSW Language and Culture NEST) including: Dharawal, Gumbaynggirr, Gamilaraay, Paakantyi and Wiradjuri. The people who have recorded My Weekend with Pop want to share their languages with you and your students. My Weekend with Pop is a taster. It provides an opportunity for students and the wider public to listen to Aboriginal languages.

In recent decades people in these communities have been involved in reviving their languages. They have worked with linguists to reconstruct and re-learn their languages, using a combination of archival/historical materials and orally-held community knowledge of the languages. Following detrimental treatment from colonial through to recent decades, policies for Aboriginal languages have only recently become supportive. The Library project is part of a fabric of support now available through several government and non-government organisations, working alongside communities to strengthen their languages.

My weekend with Pop is the latest in a range of State Library projects that aim to support the revitalisation of Indigenous languages. In 2011, the State Library embarked on the landmark Rediscovering Indigenous Languages project to identify Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Language materials held within the Library’s extensive collection. Since then the Library has worked to connect communities across NSW with language materials held in the Library’s archive, and helped them to showcase their language and engage audiences.