Sit Down with ... Rosie Sitorus: Geraldton musician and linguist on the power of preserving ancient languages

A linguist by trade, singer and writer by night, and a humble woman in all aspects of her life, cultural “conduit” Rosie Sitorus is someone you should encounter if you want to reconnect or learn about your connection to language. Through her captivating poems, soothing lyrics, or contagious laugh, the woman has made a tremendous effort to support the community and reconnect people to their language through her music and linguistic work. Although she is not a First Nations person, she has worked alongside them at Bundiyarra Aboriginal Corporation since 2014 and considers herself a “conduit” for those hoping to reconnect with their language. “I see myself as a conduit. I’m just here to connect things back together, and it’s an important job that someone needs to do,” she muses. “Language work is about the process, not the outcome. The process of doing the work, the process of reconnecting people, the process of making a dictionary. That is the outcome.” A childhood filled with different influences and cultural diversity, 34-year-old Ms Sitorus is a passionate linguist and first-generation Australian woman born in Perth to a Dutch mother and an Indonesian father. Like many migrants, Ms Sitorus explained how her mother and grandparents found it hard to adjust to the difference in culture when they arrived in Australia from the Netherlands after World War II, leaving behind their Dutch heritage to fit into their new home. Ms Sitorus’ parents married soon after meeting each other in Indonesia — her father was new to Australia when she was born which meant his English was poor during her childhood. On the other hand, she said, “he was multilingual, you know, he speaks five languages.” “And, yeah,” Ms Sitorus paused. “This job — working in language and with Yamatji people in this space — has helped me understand him better. It’s changed how I see our relationship.” Throughout her school years, Ms Sitorus frequently travelled between Perth and Norseman, boarding for her first three years in high school, describing the experience as a “fuel for her independence”. Attending school at Perth Modern at a time when there were no boarding facilities, Ms Sitorus said she spent Year 8 living privately with an “old lady” her mother had met at church, Year 9 at the Swanleigh Boarding Hostel, and a few months at Rotary Residential College in East Victoria Park. “(Then) my mum decided to move down because it was too disruptive,” she said. Moving forward, Ms Sitorus arrived in Geraldton when she was 25. She began her internship at Yamatji Marlpa Aboriginal Corporation to chase her dream of becoming a lawyer after completing a lengthy double degree in law (which she doesn’t like to talk about) and arts. Within a year, it became apparent she wasn’t interested in law. “I was misaligned . . . let’s just say that,” Ms Sitorus puts it. Unfortunately, Ms Sitorus’ passion to travel to France to teach English didn’t eventuate when her mother passed away in 2014. As an only child, she was left to care for the pet dog and manage the estate. “I was at a bit of a loss of what to do, and that’s when the linguist job at Irra Wangga was advertised,” she said. Although there are times she struggles with being a non-Aboriginal person working in the Irra Wangga language space, she believes it’s a privilege to connect people to their language, and she described the job as an important role someone has to do. Throughout working with Indigenous language, she began to understand how difficult it would be for her father to watch her assimilate to a different culture. “He saw his Batak child. So I can see how challenging that would have been for him to have this completely foreign kid,” she said. The realisation founded her understanding of Indigenous culture. “I see a lot of kids, I see them struggling. They don’t know why they’re struggling or why they don’t fit in, or why they grate against the way society runs,” she said. Ms Sitorus discussed how there weren’t words for please or thank you in other cultures as there was no need to thank someone for receiving time or sharing resources. “A lot of kids at a particular school were labelled as rude because they didn’t say please or thank you,” she said. “And it’s something that a lot of Aboriginal communities now have learnt and do say, but it’s this persistent, real small cultural norm that grates against (culture).” “You’re just perceived as rude, or you are just perceived as a bit different, and it’s those things that you can’t quantify that, I think present the difficulty.” Ms Sitorus said her parents split when she was 18 months old as she was raised in Perth by her mother. As a result, she discovered music as a “way out”. “Music was, I guess, a vehicle for me to pursue what I wanted to,” she said. Raised in the classical music tradition as a choral performer up until arriving in Geraldton, it influenced her multi-layered harmonies and countermelodies. Her two worlds of music and language continued to meld together when, after more than two years of searching, Ms Sitorus finally met with the last man on Earth to speak his language, Thiinma elder Peter Salmon. At the time, Mr Salmon was working remotely as a cattleman at Rocklea Station in the Pilbara. Ms Sitorus built a strong relationship with him, and as working partners they eventually reformed the Thiinma language for future generations. “If he hadn’t come along and insisted, the language would have just died with him,” she said. “It was a hard-won connection, I worked so hard to get there and I could see how much he knew about things. It just astounds me that someone could be so knowledgeable. “He is very practical. He said he wanted his grandkids to be able to navigate the country and know the important places.” From then, the duo formed a musical partnership and have performed live music in Thiinma to preserve the almost-extinct language. Ms Sitorus hopes someday to move away from the strict linguistic approach to language into cultural, creative ways of working art and music into it. “Without language programs and people who are passionate, there are undoubtedly countless people like Peter who have passed away without ever having that joy of reconnecting with their language. It makes me pretty sad to think about it,” she said. “We’ve got people whose identities aren’t rooted in anything, and that is a struggle for anyone. “That is why children who are taken away from their families, or whose parents pass away, or who aren’t connected to a community become disenfranchised and troubled, because our sense of self doesn’t come from ourselves, it comes from everything around us.” Ms Sitorus and Mr Salmon’s music journey is ongoing with their band Warralgurniya — which means ‘singing’ in Thiinma — with Ms Sitorus saying she was in the process of releasing a CD.