Wik-Alken Past Recording and Maintenance Activity

The following is a preliminary overview of a selection of language resources and documentation about the language and speakers of Wik-Ngatharr and Wik-Alken/Wik-Elken:
(1) Ursula McConnel, an anthropologist who carried out long-term fieldwork on Wik-Mungkan in the 1920s, recorded kinship terms in Wik-Ngatharr which were published in McConnel (1933).
(2) During his long-term fieldwork on language, society and territory at Cape Keerweer, Peter Sutton has collected recordings in seven dialects of the region, in particular Wik-Ngathan but also Wik-Ngatharr/Wik-Alken. Sound recordings are held at AIATSIS, some with restricted access rights. Karntin & Sutton (1986: 82–108) have published a Wik-Ngatharr translated text with brief linguistic notes. In addition, a number of entries in the Wik-Ngathan Dictionary (Sutton, 1995) specify Wik-Ngatharr terms. The site-mapping database (Sutton et al. 1990) includes some Wik-Ngatharr/Wik-Alken language data.
(3) Donald Thomson collected a list of kinship terms during anthropological fieldwork in Cape York in 1933 which includes a list of kinship and anatomical terms in Wik-Ngatharr (Wik Alken), of which some data is published in Thomson (1972) and a Wik-Ngatharr text in Thomson (1936) on Fatherhood.
(4) Elicited wordlists collected by Ken Hale (1958) include some Wik-Ngatharr data and examples, published in Hale (1964, 1976).
(5) Recent language documentation work has involved collaborative research to record the current language practices of Wik-Ngathan, Wik-Ngatharr and Wik-Alken speakers as part of a pan-dialectal documentation project about Wik-Ngathan and Wik-Ngatharr/Wik-Alken. The documentation materials have formed the basis for a community-oriented archive and further descriptive work (Ashmore, in prep).
(6) A language and Cultural maintenance project involving the digitisation of genealogical and photographic material held at South Australian Museum was completed in March 2016. These materials will form the basis for the Aurukun Keeping Culture Archive currently in development.