Why Aboriginal English Is Not Broken: The Academic Fighting for Recognition
Professor Debra Dank has spent four decades proving that Aboriginal English is not 'broken' but represents sophisticated communication systems that teachers still fail to understand.
For all people, language is more than just words – it shapes what and how we think, it allows us to articulate our human condition and therefore, to perpetuate our communities. For Dr Debra Dank, that understanding began early. Growing up in remote Australia, where English was not the dominant language, she quickly realised communication was something that ran much deeper than simple vocabulary.
Encouraged by her parents to pursue teaching, Dr Dank started out in classrooms, working with children in urban and remote communities. It was there that she began noticing the gap between how students communicated and how schools expected them to. This led to her interest in not just what students were learning, but how they were making sense of the world – essentially how language, culture, and the thinking around it all fit together. Gaining a PhD that focused on narrative practice, Dr Dank concentrated on how meaning is shaped by culture, which has since underpinned her work across education, language, narrative and community advocacy.
'If we consider the details, we, all communities, have our own really different and distinct ways of communicating with each other,' she explains. 'It is not just about words and labels. It is also about how we understand each other when now, in Australia, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people use the same vocabulary set. How we read situations, how we make meaning of what is being said is all dependent on underlying cognition. That is what we do not see. That is what we must become more familiar with.'
That insight would go on to shape a career spanning more than four decades across education, research, and community advocacy. 'We often assume that vocabulary is the thing within communication,' she says. 'People think if you know the words, you understand what is going on. But it is not that simple. It is the thinking behind it – the frameworks people are using to interpret and subsequently articulate the world – that really matters.'
That idea became central to her work with remote Aboriginal communities, particularly during her time with the Fred Hollows Foundation, where she helped establish what would become the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. What began as a push to supply books quickly evolved into something more complex. 'If communities and families do not see themselves in literature, there is limited potential for engagement,' she says. 'You cannot just hand over stories that do not reflect people's lives and expect them to connect. All communities – Aboriginal or otherwise – build relationships with literature through a familiarity with the narrative. We all want to see ourselves in what we read – we want to recognise our families, our places, our ways of being.'
In response, she worked closely with communities to create stories grounded in local languages, voices, and experiences – an approach that has since become central to culturally responsive literacy programs. Rather than forcing mainstream narratives, the focus shifted to supporting communities to tell their own.
Alongside her academic and community work, Dr Dank has also become a powerful literary voice. Her books blend memoir, history, and cultural reflection and explore identity, Country, and belonging. Through her writing and her work, she challenges the idea that Aboriginal English is somehow lacking – an attitude she says is still far too common in classrooms and the broader Australian community. 'I am still meeting teachers who refer to Aboriginal children's speech as broken English,' she says. 'I think, why would you describe it that way? You would not say that about other children. These are fully formed, rule-governed ways of speaking – they make sense within their own systems.'
It is instances like this that she argues for a shift in perspective – one that deepens the recognition and use of Aboriginal English and Kriol (an English-based Creole language spoken by many Aboriginal communities in northern Australia). While progress in this shift is being made, she describes change as uneven and often shaped more by politics than teaching. However, Dr Dank believes outcomes in remote education can vary dramatically depending on a teacher's willingness to engage with community and build reciprocal and trusting relationships. 'What I hope to achieve is genuinely just a better and more just world,' she says. 'One where people understand that the English-speaking world's ways are not the only ways – where different ways of knowing and being are respected, not dismissed.'
