Denise Smith-Ali awarded a 2023 Order of Australia Medal

Noongar Yorga Denise Smith-Ali was honoured with a 2023 Order of Australia Medal for her work over the last 20 years, preserving and reviving the Noongar language.

Denise’s Noongar culture has been the foundation for her life’s work as the Senior Linguist/ Language Coordinator for the Noongar Language Centre.

"The benefit of that work is if our language died, we would have some really good evidence of what the language looked like and for the younger generation that are coming forward to see."

“This is why we invest and take this language work seriously – it is the bloodlines, storylines and songlines of our Noongar nation.” said Denise.

Denise plans to continue her work undertaking forensic analysis of the extensive recordings, transcriptions, historic materials, lexical database, morphology, dictionary, sketch grammar and phonology. 

Learn more about Denise’s achievement at the Noongar Language Centre website.