PY Media has produced thousands of videos in the past 30 years. Many of these films are screened regularly on Indigenous Community Television.
PY Media is concerned with the maintenance of Pitjantjatjara as a living language and is actively supporting its preservation and promotion. With the ever widening gap between the language that is spoken by Elders to that spoken by the younger generation there is the potential for a language crisis in the not too distant future.
With approximately 3,000 Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara speakers, the need for concerted initiatives that promote and strengthen local language use should be of the highest priority. The video collection is a legacy passed on from Ernabella Video Television (EVTV), the name of PY Media prior to 1989. The video collection represents all of EVTV’s and PY Media’s recorded material from 1983 to 1996, approximately 3,000 hours of recorded material in the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara languages.
Much of the material is extremely important and sensitive cultural material such as Inma (dance and song) and Tjukurpa (traditional storytelling and re-enactments of dreaming stories), oral histories, as well as traditional skills and knowledge programs such as Bush Medicine, Bush Food and making a Wiltja (traditional shelter).
Here is a recent film by Pin Rada and Alison Hunt, co-produced by The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Media which documents the activities of a camp run by senior Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara elders from Amata Community in the APY Lands who are trying to pass on their traditional culture to the children of their community.
