Dr Debra Dank’s Terraglossia, the follow-up to her acclaimed We Come With This Place, represents both an exciting development in the field of Indigenous semiotics and an accessible foray into the worlds of culture, language and meaning-making that her academic work emerges from. Faced with the impact of colonial violence and the systemic silencing of Indigenous voices, Dank turns her attention to language itself, arguing that Australian English as it currently exists is incapable of capturing the intricate knowledges and communication systems of the first Australians, whose living cultures predate English by thousands of years. If we want a fairer, kinder Australia, she suggests we might have to reshape the very language we speak.
Far from just a snappy title, terraglossia is a concept central to this argument: Dank introduces it as a neologism meaning ‘tongues of the earth’ – standing in opposition to ‘terra nullius’ – but a fuller understanding of its importance only reaches you with the book’s final chapters, once you’ve grasped what it might mean for the earth to speak. Before you get there, Dank will lead you on a meandering reflection on communication and Country that encompasses her own lived experience both as a Gudanji/Wakaja and Kalkadoon woman and as a student and schoolteacher in various iterations of the Australian education system. For those unfamiliar with Indigenous concepts of relationality and responsibility, Dank is an admirable guide, although this book can demand patience and concentration in thornier sections.
Despite it being a book about speaking, I think the key to approaching Terraglossia lies in listening: listening to those voices of the earth; listening to forms of communication that don’t find expression in English; listening to the first custodians of this land about how to care for it; and, most of all, listening to Dr Debra Dank and her hopes for the future.
