Program speakers

Vanessa Farrelly

Pertame Language Coordinator – Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education

Vanessa Ngala Farrelly is a Pertame Southern Arrernte young person living in Alice Springs (Mparntwe) on Central Arrernte Country. She is currently employed by the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education as the Pertame Language Nest Coordinator within the Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics (CALL). Vanessa has 6 years experience coordinating the Pertame Language Revival School. The Pertame School launched the first and only total immersion Language Nest in Australia, modelled off best practise Language revival practises from New Zealand, Hawaii and North America. The Pertame Ngetya Untya (Language Nest) is a immersion playgroup for Pertame children from birth to 5 years old and their parents to be immersed within their language, culture and community to create bilingual, culturally resilient, and community-connected children. English is left at the front door and children are totally surrounded by their Indigenous language so they can be raised naturally as first language speakers once again. Vanessa won the Alice Springs NAIDOC Youth of the year in 2019, the Minister for Territory Families Scholarship for Women in Higher Education in 2017 and the Judith Wright Scholarship for High Achieving Indigenous Undergraduate Women in 2016. She received the 2019 College of Indigenous Futures, Arts and Society Student Award in recognition of outstanding academic performance within her Undergraduate degree at Charles Darwin University in Applied Social Science.