I am very pleased that important sound recordings of Tasmanian Aboriginal language held in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) collection have today been officially inscribed on UNESCO’s Australian Memory of the World Register.
The recordings, which have been in TMAG’s collection for over 100 years, contain the only spoken record of the original Tasmanian Aboriginal languages, spoken and sung by Fanny Cochrane Smith – the last fluent speaker of those languages.
For Cochrane Smith’s descendants, the recordings provide a legacy of cultural knowledge and a record of family oral history while also illustrating the resilience and cultural continuity of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community.
Exhibits such as these strengthen TMAG’s position as one of Tasmania’s premier cultural attractions that attracts locals and tourists alike and will help the Government reach its goal of attracting 1.5 million visitors to the state by 2020
Visitors can listen to copies of the recordings when visiting TMAG’s ningina tunapri gallery, and they are also one of TMAG’s 100 objects that shaped the state, as listed in the Shaping Tasmania project.
To find out more about the wax cylinders, visit the Shaping Tasmania website at http://shapingtasmania.tmag.tas.gov.au/object.aspx?ID=39.
To view the full UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register, visit http://www.amw.org.au/.