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Preserving the Guugu Yimithirr language through song and video

12 May 2021
Culture and Capability
A group of youth walk across a wet and sandy beach between two sets of trees. In the background is more beach, an island and a cloudy sky. Text at the base of the image means Come with us in the Guugu Yimithirr language.

Watch the video of Thaarba Ngalbaaya - The Snake is Hiding sung in the Guugu Yimithirr language from the east coast of Cape York Peninsula.

Pama Language Centre is working with the First Nations of Cape York Peninsula to revive and preserve the 149 threatened languages of the region.

In the 5th of our series on language preservation, we present a song composed by Guugu Yimithirr language students in Hope Vale called Thaarba Ngalbaaya – The Snake is Hiding.

Teacher Lillian Bowen OAM and Pama Language Centre’s Songs on Country facilitator, composer and music educator, Joshua McHugh, worked with the students to compose, record and film the song clip, featuring beautiful footage of the composers themselves at Coloured Sands and Elim Beach at Hope Vale.

Thaarba Ngalbaaya was the first of many original Songs on Country compositions in Guugu Yimithirr by students at Hope Vale School.

Watch Thaarba Ngalbaaya with English subtitles.

Find out more

Thaarba Ngalbaaya was produced by Songs on Country, a Pama Language Centre project funded by the Office for the Arts through the Indigenous Languages and the Arts program.

For more information, visit Pama Language Centre.