At demonstrations about the genocide in Gaza, it has been encouraging to see that speakers have acknowledged the traditional owners of unceded sovereign lands.

There is a strong link between the colonialism that oppresses the Indigenous peoples in Palestine and Australia. This oppression manifests itself in various ways including systematic apartheid and eradication of identity.

We know that Indigenous Australians have had their land, their lore and their language stolen. In the case of language, there is the obvious obliteration that has occurred as children were forbidden to use their language and were removed from the families who would pass on such vital aspects of identity. Dr Debra Dank looks at the loss of language in broader context and provides an important critique of colonial linguistic invasion.

If Dank’s earlier book We Come with This Country challenged assumptions that drive attitudes to Indigenous Australians, Terraglossia questions the linguistic underpinnings of those colonial frames and thought processes. The book’s cover explains that this neologism is a noun with a couple of meanings – 1. earth speak and 2. tongues of the earth. Its antonym is terra nullius.

Indeed, the English language, which arrived in 1770 or 1788, still has destructive effects and inhibits our ability to communicate with one another and to understand the land and its long-established peoples. The language system, which was imposed by the invaders, has been implicated in species extinction, rapacious exploitation of the land and genocide of Indigenous peoples. English language is as unsuitable for this continent as are foreign farming practices, the mould board plough, the rabbit and cattle hooves.

Put simply, Indigenous languages evolved in the natural environment, recognising the needs of people, flora and fauna. Their ethical content developed as a response to the needs for sustainability and order over millenia. English has no words for many concepts required to live here harmoniously and those who brought this alien way of speaking sought to erase language along with lore in order to have a blank slate upon which to work. Professor Sue Joseph writes in her foreword, as she looks out upon the landscape, that she sees fences, fierce and hard and dividing – commonly known as signs of progress, but not to the Indigenous peoples and the animals that form part of their existence. Nor should they signify progress without qualification to any of us.

Dank might write in English but her epistemology is surely Indigenous, or as she points out, Gudanji and Wakaja. One of the consequences of invasion has been homogenisation and stereotyping to construct a single Indigenous identity convenient for dealing with, suppressing and governing.

The way that wordless music “speaks” to us, or to some of us, is suggestive of the ways in which language engages with people to different degree. It goes over the heads of some, urges others to listen and learn, and is absorbed into the beings of some.

So it is with Indigenous languages. They are not limited to the kinds of understanding individualistic Western cultures use to interpret and assign meaning. Indigenous languages are many layered and multi-faceted. They are part of the experience of existence and not just a way of seeing it and attempting to describe it in separation.

Several perceptive readers have noted that Dank’s work needs to be absorbed slowly. It is dense and rich and contains great truths about linguistics, about society and about ethics which are not easily taught or conveyed in dialectic and binary English. Terraglossia contains profound philosophy and would sit comfortably alongside the works of Berger, Chomsky, Austen and Wittgenstein. Its intuition is not confined or confused by the limitations of English.

Learning in the ways of academic English was utilitarian for Dank, as it has been for every Indigenous Australian. She is conversant with terms such as polysemy, polyphony and polyvalency. But for Dank, at least, such expertise did not threaten her innate understanding, which remained strong. So she can still see the importance of reciprocity, obligation and responsibility.

We should all be grateful that Dank’s insights are expressed in a way we can share. How much better we could and can live in this land when we have access to the richness of Indigenous language. Every student of linguistics should read this important work as should anyone who seeks to understand Australia.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.