Mising is an under described language from the Eastern Tani branch of the Tani subgroup of Tibeto-Burman (Figure 1). It is currently spoken by approximately 587,310 Mising tribes people living primarily in eight districts of upper Assam, namely Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Sibsagar, Jorhat, Golaghat, Dhemaji, Lakhimpur, and Sonitpur (Census of India 2001). There are at least nine regional varieties of Missing: Pagro, Dalu, Ojan, Saajay, Moojiy, Dambug, Samuguria, Tamargoja, and Bojkual, of which the last three groups have largely adopted Assamese (an Indo-Aryan language) in preference to Mising for the majority of language situations. Mising is a synthetic and agglutinating language with extensive verb morphology (suffixes), as is typical of the Tani languages. Unlike most other Tani languages, most if not all varieties of Mising appear to lack tone as a contrastive lexical feature.

Nationalism has persisted as one of the most powerful, consequential and overdetermined forces in contemporary world affairs. While its origin and trajectory have long been disputed, nationalism's hold on the human imagination is undeniable even in this age of globalisation, with its seemingly relentless cultural, political and economic homogenisation. Nationalism is poised to continue to be a major factor in relations within and among states, as well as in developments at regional, sub-regional, continental and global scales. This seemingly stubborn and resilient character of nationalism and its associated national projects invites the following contending questions of a theoretical and empirical nature... While the answers to these questions are not easy and straightforward, this book has, in various ways, attempted to offer some compelling and well argued responses. The book provided fresh and critical reflections on nationalism and national projects with a focus on Southern Africa, a region where former liberation movements are still in power and where national projects of various kinds have been created as part of pushing forward the decolonisation project into the realm of economic freedom and regional integration. The collection of chapters in the book joins the ever-increasing scholarly debates and conversations around the resurgent significance of nationalism and the national project in twenty-first century world politics.

The role of the academy in the manufacture of individual and group identities remains least understood from theoretical and empirical perspectives. The legitimation and consumption of such identity discourses (by both academic practitioners and the general public) have also been inadequately theorised. What is well known and heavily theorised is the subject of how disciplines have created their own identities but the consequence of such disciplinary identity formations remains a grey area that still requires systematic theorisation. Drawing on a selection of humanities and social science disciplines, their academic associations, journals and journal articles bearing the name 'southern Africa' as its data set, this paper provides a critical discourse analysis of how these fields of study have shaped the idea of southern Africa. The overall intention here is not to flag which discipline provides the best definition and understanding of southern Africa. Rather, the overarching argument is this: in the course of pursuing their individual disciplinary interests, the different strands of the humanities and social sciences have inadvertently invented and sustained competing and contested southern African identities that are inconsistent with the dynamic and fluid nature of the everyday lived experiences of the peoples whose region they purport to describe and represent in academic circles.

Higher and tertiary education institutions have come to be recognised as centers of academic excellence charged with the social responsibility of generating knowledge that can be used to circumvent the challenges confronting society. The western oriented education system characterising higher and tertiary institutions in modern Zimbabwe has failed to meet this premium because it lacks an appreciation of locally produced philosophies and thought systems. This article exposes those methodological and pragmatic tenets of African indigenous knowledge systems (AIKSs), which are worth mainstreaming in higher and tertiary education curricula.

Government first provided education to students living in remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, in the 1950s. After 50 years, numerous government reports show that the vast majority of Indigenous students in remote communities do not succeed in learning basic English, literacy and numeracy. Galiwin'ku is a large Northern Territory Aboriginal community or township on Elcho Island, North-east Arnhem Land. Nearly all of the Aboriginal people there speak an Indigenous language (Yolŋu Matha) as their first language(s). Most students begin school with little or no knowledge of English language. The school at Galiwin'ku, Shepherdson College, is an accredited Two Way or bilingual school. Higher achieving students in remote Indigenous schools generally achieve just below Australian benchmark levels in numeracy at grade 3, but fall further behind by grade 5. Student achievements at school level off in most aspects of the curriculum. Many, if not most high school age Indigenous students, remain at around grade 3 levels of English and literacy and numeracy competency (Public Accounts Committee 1996) (PAC). The questions this thesis seeks to address are: do the Indigenous children at Galiwin'ku learn their own language thoroughly, to age appropriate norms? If the students 'are' learning their own language to age appropriate norms, what are they doing in English? Does the data gathered on the students' English give insights into how educators might assist the students in learning English better? Are there linguistic and/or other factors, which might be constraining Indigenous students from learning English (and literacy and numeracy) at Galiwin'ku? The study involved recording children describing pictures from storybooks and cartoons in Yolŋu Matha and English. Teachers at the school were asked to complete questionnaires (voluntary) about their qualifications, experience and views on teaching in an ESL situation in an Indigenous school. Factors that affect Indigenous children from succeeding at school were investigated from government reports of inquiries into Indigenous education and health.