02 Aug A collaboration between the Wiradjuri and Charles Sturt University (CSU)
CSU established the Graduate Certificate Wiradjuri Language, Culture and Heritage for the first intake of students in January 2014.
The Course focuses of three main goals:
- Culturally centred and responsive space for Wiradjuri to live and learn
- Revitalise Wiradjuri culture, heritage and identity
- Rebuild the Nation by Rebuilding a Nations identity- Revitalise Wiradjuri Language
The course has created a community of students who are engaged in their wider communities. The community of the course includes Wiradjuri Elders, established leaders and rising leaders of great vitality and commitment to recovering, restoring and developing Wiradjuri language culture and heritage. It is a community development dynamo that is helping to heal, inspire and create opportunities for social, economic and cultural revitalisation.
The course guides, educates and supports students, but it is also designed to allow students to find their own ways into Wiradjuri language, culture and heritage, drawing on and sharing their own backgrounds, experience and expertise.
The Graduate Certificate in Wiradjuri Language, Culture and Heritage answered a call from the Elders of the Wiradjuri nation. Now, it has begun to speak back to the Wiradjuri nation, helping to recover the past, to revitalise the present, and to rejuvenate the life, the language, the culture and the heritage of the Wiradjuri nation. In these ways, it contributes to building a more certain, stronger and safer Wiradjuri future for Wiradjuri people.
There are currently 41 students enrolled in the course including 6 non-Indigenous students.
CSU is proud to offer this one of a kind university course in Australia and is focused on ensuring the ongoing engagement and development of the course and its graduates.
Image by Nives Zolakar, 2016 cohort –the community of Wiradjuri language speakers grows