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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Fleur Connick

‘We just stopped using it’: bringing back an Indigenous language through children’s books

Deniliquin
Moonahcullah Aboriginal Station
When the Moonahcullah mission in NSW closed in 1961, its residents moved to nearby Deniliquin and stopped using the Wamba Wamba language in public. Photograph: Fleur Connick/The Guardian

There were no children’s books at the Moonahcullah mission near Deniliquin, where Jeanette Crew grew up. They had a reader, but no stories. Fairy tales and fables – stories other children grew up knowing – were left untold.

“One of the most read things was a catalogue, one of those mail-order catalogues,” Crew says.

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