First Nations peoples across the continent (and indeed, across the world) have been practising, preserving and transmitting their linguistic practices since time immemorial. This backgrounder explores the revitalisation and resurgence of First Nations languages, including understanding language renewal as a site of resistance, as a living connection with Country, and as a complex knowledge system.
Importantly, language resurgence is not just about ‘linguistic activity’ (in other words, speaking, teaching or listening to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages), but offers a powerful means of enacting sovereignty and self-determination by reconnecting people to their culture and Country – connections that the settler colonial state and its actors have attempted to destroy on this continent since 1788. By engaging with their languages, First Nations peoples embody their unbroken sovereignty—a sovereignty that has existed since time immemorial and which continues to manifest through First Nations cultural practices to this day.