BIAK, PAPUA – Head of the Culture Division of the Biak Numfor Education and Culture Office, Noli Ayomi, expressed his pride in seeing the achievements of Papuan children in the prestigious National level event beautifully, the students spoke their local language and were witnessed by hundreds of participants from various regions in Indonesia.
Dozens of elementary and junior high school students representing Papua Province gave a stunning performance at the closing of the 2024 National Mother Language Bud Festival. The songs performed in various regional languages in Papua include Byak language, Mimika language, and Tobati language and the team’s performance ended with the Balada Cendrawasih dance.
Noli Ayomi said as many as 4 elementary and junior high school students from Biak Numfor district participated in the prestigious 2024 National Mother Language Bud Festival, “very proud to see the culture and characteristics as a Papuan child, especially the Biak tribe can be displayed at the National event, so that many people know the Biak tribal culture like this and this is extraordinary, hopefully it can motivate other children,” said Noli Ayomi.
Noli hopes that through this activity, his party will be more active in revitalizing cultural values, one of which is the Biak regional language, “this is what we should encourage to get more serious attention, especially cultural development activities for children so that they do not forget their identity as indigenous children,” he said.
One of the participants from Biak Numfor district, Aprilia Boboy said she was happy to be selected from many children in Papua to take part in the mother tongue festival after winning the speech competition in Biak and as a young generation of Biak, Aprilia invited all native Papuan children to preserve the mother tongue by using their local language, “I have a message for all my friends in Biak, let’s keep preserving the local language and never be ashamed to use our own local language,” said the 6th grade student of SD Inpres Burokub Biak after appearing at the 2024 National Indonesian Language Bud Festival in Jakarta.
One of the participants of the 2024 National Indonesian Language Bud Festival, a student from the State Junior High School 2 Jayapura, Teddy Dimara also advised that all young people in Papua have an obligation to act as mother tongue speakers. This is an effort to preserve and protect each regional language which is a Papuan culture that must continue to be protected, “friends in Papua, let’s preserve the regional language or mother tongue in Papua from an early age, if not now, when else? If not people, who else?, he said.
From data from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, Papua province has 428 mother tongues and is the largest in Indonesia.