Gomeroi language reference group: Groundbreaking Indigenous language teaching project set to hit schools this year

It's barely six months after the first meeting for the groundbreaking cultural restoration campaign.

But Gomeroi Language Reference Group member Rob Waters said the effort to eventually teach Tamworth's local Indigenous language in every school in the city is already making extraordinary progress, with the group set to hire a project officer in the next weeks.

"There's so many different things that are happening and it's all happening pretty quick," he said.

"We'll be looking at rolling out community-based programs. The project officer will be looking at putting programs in schools."

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The reference group plans to help develop the formal educational resources, like lesson plans, exams, textbooks and qualified teachers, required to get Gomeroi language into every Tamworth school.

Mr Waters said local schools have proved to be extremely supportive of the concept.

"They are screaming out for it. There's a lot of interest."

The language teaching effort is part of a project to restore Gomeroi, a language which nearly lapsed after colonialism.

Many living Aboriginal people were forced to not learn their own language as part of a determined effort to crush their culture.

It didn't work and in the 1990s, the language was codified and dictionaries published, the first steps to language restoration.

School language lessons will be accompanied by efforts to teach in the community, potentially on a Saturday afternoon down by the river - with youngsters teaching their parents to speak their language.

"A lot of our old people were denied any opportunity to speak their language so they've got their babies, their kids and grandkids, speaking to them and they don't really understand," Mr Waters said.

"So what we're doing is being able to bring the kids and the parents and the elders, everybody, so we're all learning together and we're all speaking together. Eventually we'll get to that point where you're just walking down the street and say yaama, speaking in Gomeroi."

President of the Aboriginal Education Consultative Group Cathy Waters-Trindall, who lives in Tamworth, said it was an exciting project.

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"There are so many language stories out there that are empowering. Whilst we were invaded at the cost of the decimation of our languages, and our cultures and histories, our language has always remained. It's in the trees, it's in the wind, it's in the birds, it's in every crevice of this land we know as Australia," she said.

"In some parts it's extremely strong and it's been retained and in other parts it's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. And we're all slowly starting to put our pieces together again and that's what we need to do to reclaim our cultural identity, and affirm the fact that we've always been here."

The language was codified and dictionaries published in the 1990s.

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