Saving the Kaurna language?

The "Kaurna" language is supposedly the language of the people of the plains on which I live. Move about a kilometre further and you come to the foothills and the low mountain ranges where there were other tribes and other languages.

The Kaurna language has almost gone. All that really remains are some words. Even the pronunciation is uncertain. "Kaurna" is usually pronounced "Garna" or "Garner" but even that is uncertain. 

Despite that there is piece in this morning's paper claiming that there is work going on to ensure the language somehow survives. There are said to be twenty-one schools teaching it.  It is said that this is the "original" language and that it is being "developed". The language is described as being "strong" and "resilient".

It is none of those things. I do know something about language death and the death of the culture which goes with it. It always saddens me because we lose so much when we lose a language. We lose an entire way of seeing the world. 

But Kaurna was lost long ago. It has not survived white settlement. It was a language not fit for that purpose. The people who used it had entirely different language needs.  They only needed to communicate on a daily basis with a very small group of people over a very small area. For the most part they did not even communicate with the tribes in the hills less than hour's walk away. There is evidence they fought one another rather than befriended each other. 

The Kaurna vocabulary of the time was suited to their daily purpose but it was not suited to contact with the white settlers. They needed to create words or use the words of the white settlers. History shows us that, for almost everything, they used the words of the white settlers. This was inevitable because before you can create words you need other words which allow you to express the necessary concepts. 

So what are they really doing here? They are not saving a language at all. Are they trying to create one? If so, how? If so, why? Is this simple a woke exercise?

Language learning in this country is not something with which we seem to have much success. For many years schools taught Latin, French and German. There were after school classes in subjects like Italian and Modern Greek. Then "Asian" languages became a "thing" and we started teaching Japanese and Chinese - often so badly it was of no real value at all. Widely spoken languages like Spanish, Arabic or Swahili were ignored completely. Despite the influx of refugees from Vietnam there was little Vietnamese taught. Even now it is hard to find schools which teach these things.  

I don't like the idea that the Kaurna language has been lost but so have the languages of the hill tribes. If the present work is simply a woke exercise without any strong foundations, and I suspect it is, then it is wrong. It isn't saving a language at all.