Explainer: the seasonal ‘calendars’ of Indigenous Australia

Press/Media: Public Engagement Activities

Period3 Jan 2018

Media contributions

1

Media contributions

  • TitleExplainer: the seasonal ‘calendars’ of Indigenous Australia
    Degree of recognitionInternational
    Media name/outletThe Conversation
    Media typeWeb
    Country/TerritoryAustralia
    Date3/01/18
    DescriptionThe words of any language tell us a lot about the history of its speakers; who they’ve been in contact with, where and how they have lived. This is certainly true of the English calendar months. It is also seen in the number and nature of the seasons named by different Indigenous communities, from the tropical north of Australia to the chillier climates down south.

    With around 370 languages and many hundreds more dialects originally spoken in Australia, it is impossible to do justice to the wealth and variety of traditional systems of tracking time and seasons. But a recurrent theme is the interconnectedness of human activities and the cycle of changes in flora and fauna that attend the tilting of the earth’s axis.
    URLhttps://theconversation.com/explainer-the-seasonal-calendars-of-indigenous-australia-88471
    PersonsAlice Gaby, Tyson Yunkaporta