Expanding the law’s vocabulary – Indigenous-language legislation and multilingual treaty interpretation

ABSTRACT Although not widely publicized or studied, Australian parliaments are increasingly breaking new ground in enacting statutory text in Indigenous languages. There are important public discussions to be had about the symbolic significance of this process and the practical benefits it may reap for language preservation. This article looks at a more technical, but no less important, issue: how Indigenous language statutory text is to be interpreted by English-speaking courts. This issue demands urgent resolution so that interpretative anxieties do not deter continued progress in this field. The potential resolution suggested by this article is that Indigenous language statutory text be interpreted using the same principles applied to non-English treaties. A worked example illustrates how this interpretative approach might work in practice.