Book Review: Terraglossia

Written by: Duncan B. on 16 June 2025

Last year Vanguard reviewed the book Bina-First Nations Languages Old and New, which told of the destruction of Indigenous languages in Australia following the colonisation of Australia. A new book Terraglossia, also discusses the damage caused to Indigenous civilisation by the English language.

The author, Dr Debra Dank is a Gudanji/Wakaja and Kalkadoon woman from the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory. She has worked for 40 years in primary, secondary and tertiary education roles in various parts of Australia.

Terraglossia is a word that means earth speak or tongues of the earth. It is the opposite of terra nullius, the concept which was used to justify the dispossession of the Indigenous peoples from their lands. It is a word Dr Dank coined herself to allow us to identify “the words that illustrate or define Aboriginal and Islander ways of thinking, knowing, being, doing and seeing as defined by us through our concepts, and not merely non-Aboriginal concepts massaged into something that is close enough.”

Dr Dank points out how the English language is unsuitable to describe and define Indigenous culture. She writes, “Since Cook, Aboriginal Australian lives and ways of living have been defined through the vocabularies, the concepts and the perceptions of people and languages that are not our own.”

She uses as an example of this the English word nomadic. She writes, “This word, which means ‘migratory’ or ‘moving from place to place’, does not recognise the systematic and structured ways of travelling across a defined landscape. It does not represent the thinking, knowledge and disciplined decision-making that means people can relocate to another environment, one that has had time to regenerate since its last occupation.”

Languages are critical to the continuity of cultures, but Colonisation made English the dominant language in Australia with the destruction of many Indigenous languages along with their speakers. The survivors were often forbidden to use their own languages when they were herded into missions and reservations. 

The English language, along with guns, disease and religion were the weapons that the colonial invaders used to almost wipe out Australia’s Indigenous people and their centuries-old culture. Terraglossia helps us to understand the role the English language played in this destruction.

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