Amery began working in Aboriginal communities as a nurse, in 1980. After working for some time as an Aboriginal health worker educator, he started taking an interest in education when working in
Yirrkala, in northeast
Arnhem Land in 1985. He researched
Dhuwaya, a new
koiné variety of
Yolngu Matha which was predominantly used by youth. In 1990, Amery created the first complete sentence in the Kaurna language known to people still alive. In the early 1990s he worked as project officer for the Australian Indigenous Languages Framework. Amery was a co-founder of
Kaurna Warra Pintyandi (KWP; now spelt Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi) at the university, to observe and promote the development of Kaurna. In 2012 the Commonwealth Indigenous Language Support (ILS) scheme provided funding for the project, enabling the establishment of a KWP team. This team included
Stephen Gadlabarti Goldsmith ("Uncle Stevie") until his sudden death in 2017, among others. In July 2017, the
NAIDOC Week theme was "Our Languages Matter", and Amery spoke about Aboriginal languages on
ABC Radio. In 2019 Amery told an SA Aboriginal Lands Parliamentary Standing Committee that outcomes for Kaurna language programs were much better in the mid-1990s than they are by 2019, partly due to increasing focus on
NAPLAN, and little incentive for or provision of professional development for Kaurna teachers. Amery is associate professor/reader at the University of Adelaide. He and his team (Mary-Anne Gale and Susie Greenwood) are working on the project "Sustainable Language Revival: A critical analysis of Kaurna", funded by an
ARC Discovery grant. The team is working with
Tauondi College "to build capacity within the Kaurna community to take on the roles of Kaurna language teaching and Kaurna language work". ==Research interests==