Exploring the numba dhäwu frontier

Gadigal Country, New South Wales. 29 March, 2025

In response to our Yolŋu collogues requests to understand the numba dhäwu - number story, our partnership project is looking deeper into how quantitative data can be used for First Nations governance and decision making about maternity and reproductive health services. Our challenge is that Western numbers and counting systems are foreign (colonial) concepts for Yolŋu.

Our team has begun exploring this intercultural challenge. We are thrilled to be reading and learning from Howard Amery’s newly published book: Reckoning with number: Yolŋu languages and ‘foreign number’.

Have you ever considered how pervasive numbers are in Western culture and the English language?

Take a moment to listen to everyday English conversations and you soon recognise that numbers, mathematic terms and arithmetic concepts are everywhere! Amery’s work helps us to understand that humans are not born with an innate ability for counting and arithmetic. Rather numbers and counting systems are a culturally learnt ‘cognitive technology’ (Franks et al., 2008). All human cultures and languages use qualitative number expressions but most not all have developed the technology of precise number counting systems.

Amery explains, that all humans have an innate ability to sense only between 3-4 objects and this is known as the ‘subitising range'. Think about how easy our brain processes the visual image of 3 cockatoos sitting on a powerline. Then take a moment to think about what happens when you see six, ten or thirty cockatoos sitting on the powerline. Without taking time to process the image through the cultural technology of number counting, our brain processes the image as only a loosely sized (small or big) group of cockatoos.

Photo credit: Sarah Ireland. Birds on a powerline.

Amery's work suggests that beyond our innate subsitising range, most (but not all) cultures and languages have developed number systems. A development process which Amery describes as occurring over several millennia, beginning with pre-counting grouping activities, moving to oral counting and tallying, towards written symbols and then a precise number system based on 10 or sometimes 20 numbers.

Amery cautions that though globally uncommon, it is important to consider that not all cultures have developed the cognitive technology of precise number counting systems.

Culture is always responsive to human need and it is likely that precise number systems developed in response to economic arrangements requiring accurate distribution and management of limited resources. For example the economic consequences of mass agriculture and village living. Differences between cultural technologies are not deficits, but human responsiveness to socioeconomic circumstances.

Through Amery's book, we learn that while all languages use qualitative expressions of numbers, some languages do not have precise quantitative number systems, These languages are often referred to as ‘anumeric’ or having only low limit counting numbers. Sitting now in a Sydney airport cafe, I can overhear English conversations filled with precise number quantifiers such as ‘I will see you in 15 minutes’ and imprecise qualitative quantifiers such as 'I will see you soon’.

Amery's book explores the possibilities that Yolŋu Matha and perhaps other Australian First Nations language, may be best characterised as being anumeric.  Amery's literary foray through the historical and contemporary use of numbers in Yolŋu society clearly allows us to understand that numbers are a foreign concept.

Inspired by our Yolŋu team requests to learn and understand the number story for maternal and reproductive health in Galiwin’ku, PhD student Jessica Davis has begun fieldwork for her collaborative studies to explore this cultural interface.

Jess offers this report from a recent Galiwin'ku visit:

The team spent time looking at local maternal and newborn health statistics that our partners at NT Health, Miwatj Health Service and Marthakal Homelands Health Service have shared with us. We are working on building shared understanding of the stories that this number data (number stories or namba dhäwu) can tell us.

This is challenging and interesting work because Yolŋu and Balanda (non-Indigenous people) have very different worldviews and approaches to problem-solving, and because this health data is deeply rooted in Balanda ways of thinking and collecting information. We are also thinking about the best way to share these namba dhäwu with Yolŋu families.

Photo credit: Emily Armstrong. Exploring the number story

Why are we doing this work?

Rhoda Goluŋ Dhurrkay, a Yolŋu Researcher on the team says:

We (Yolŋu) want to know more about namba dhäwu, whether it is increasing or decreasing in our Yolŋu community and why. We as Yolŋu people we use our own gakal -skills, using our own knowledge to see and observe babies. The number story is important in Balanda law, but in Yolŋu perspective we haven’t heard these words number story before, so we want to learn more about it and then we can teach our Yolŋu people out in the community to understand more about the number story.

Learn more with these links

Howard Amery

Number as a cognitive technology: Evidence from Pirahã language and cognition (Franks et al., 2008)