Walmbaria

The Walmbaria are an indigenous Australian people of Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland.

Name

The Walmbaria presently represent themselves as Dingaal, and in land claims the Walmbaar Aboriginal Corporation defines the Dingaal they represent as adult people of the Dingaal clan or people or community having a Dingaal patrilineal descent, or who were adopted by such a person, A Dingaal father is someone who descends on their father's side from any of the Baru, Yoren or Charlies families.[1]

Language

The Walmbaria name for their language was, according to Norman Tindale,[lower-alpha 1] Yalgawara, which was spoken in two dialect versions, one for the mainland branch, the other for the islanders.[3] Morer recent work has preferred the term Gambilmugu.

Country

The Walmbaria's traditional lands are estimated to have encompassed approximately 50 square miles (130 km2), extending over the reefs and Flinders island group north of Princess Charlotte Bay.[4] Their southern limits were between a site called Alumukuan in Bathurst Bay and the eastern extremity of Charlotte Bay.[3]

People and social organisation

The Walmbaria were divided into two main clans:

  • The Wureimnu were principally islanders
  • The Tartali. (Bathurst Head)[3]

Their marriage laws were, by the time late ethnographers explored them, based on a two class system, consisting of:

  • (A) Owaimini
  • (B) Ungawu.[5]

Tindale in his later report states that the Walmbaria were essentially islanders who only came over to the continental mainland, at Bathurst Head and Cape Melville. "on sufferance."[4]

The ritual extraction of a tooth (tooth avulsion) was practiced on both sexes, with the removal of either the right or left upper incisor.[6]

History

The Walmbaria used to be "recruited" for work on luggers that worked the maritime resources of this area. Some Flinders island men were involved in "the Wild Duck massacre" in which 4 European sailors were killed. Though the tribes are not named, one report from a crew member with Captain Blackwood who landed at a spot just south of Cape Melville in 1843 has provided a linguistic clue.[7] He stated that several Aborigines there were surprised by the captain's dog, and yelling: angooa. This word was taken to mean "dog", but analysis suggests that it was a form of a Barrow Point noun angwurr ("dog's bark"), and a Flinders Island verb nganggwoyi ("to bark.") The logical surmise is that the Flinders and Barrow Point peoples shared the same areas.[8]

By 1926 a survey found that the Walmbaria remnant which had managed to survive the incursions of white settlement numbered a mere 25, 10 of them male, the rest female, with no children known to exist, the youngest person encountered being 18 years old.[9]

The last survivor of Flinders Island language-speaking Aba Agathi clan was Chinaman Gilbert.[10]

Material culture

The Flinders island Walmbaria and Bathurst Head women used two kinds of mallet for pulping food and breaking oyster shells. Their men manufactured a heavier and thicker ironwood mallet than the otun, similar to the drum gong used in Melanesia, though they also used the normal regional variety employed to this end by the Barungguan and Mutumui.[11]

Alternative names and spellings

Notes
  1. There are problems with this. See Peter Sutton, who concludes that "languages in the area under consideration do not have names, at least not in the usual sense." Yalgawara/Yalgapara, Sutton argues, would actually be an exonym for a specific clan.[2]

Citations
  1. Gover 2010, p. 33n.58.
  2. Sutton 1979, pp. 94–101,p.100.
  3. Hale & Tindale 1933, p. 69.
  4. Tindale 1974, p. 187.
  5. Hale & Tindale 1933, pp. 79–80.
  6. Hale & Tindale 1933, p. 76.
  7. Sutton 2016, p. 90.
  8. Sutton 2016, pp. 90–91.
  9. Hale & Tindale 1933, p. 77.
  10. Sutton 2016, p. 92.
  11. Rigsby, Allen & Hafner 2015, p. 8.

Sources
  • "AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australia". AIATSIS.
  • Gover, Kirsty (2010). Tribal Constitutionalism: States, Tribes, and the Governance of Membership. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199587094.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Hale, H. M.; Tindale, N.B. (1933). "Aborigines of Princess Charlotte Bay, North Queensland". Records of the South Australian Museum. Adelaide. 5 (1): 64–116.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Rigsby, Bruce; Allen, Lindy; Hafner, Diane (December 2015). Roberts, Amy; McCaul, Kim (eds.). "The Legacy of Norman B. Tindale at Princess Charlotte Bay in 1927: Lamalama Engagement with Museum Collections" (PDF). Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia. 39 (Special Edition: Norman B. Tindale's Research Legacy and the Cultural Heritage of Indigenous Australians): 1–25. ISSN 1034-4438.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Sharp, R. Lauriston (March 1939). "Tribes and Totemism in North-East Australia". Oceania. 9 (3): 254–275. JSTOR 40327744.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Sutton, Peter (1979). "Australian language names" (PDF). In Wurms, Stefan A. (ed.). Australian linguistic studies. Pacific Linguistics. pp. 87–105. ISBN 978-0-858-83185-8.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Sutton, Peter (2005). "Science and sensibility on a foul frontier: At Flinders Island" (PDF). In Rigsby, Bruce; Peterson, Nicolas (eds.). Donald Thomson: The Man and Scholar. Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia /Museum Victoria. pp. 143–58. ISBN 978-0-908-29021-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Sutton, Peter (2016). "The Flinders Islands and Cape Melville people in history". In Verstraete, Jean-Christophe; Hafner, Diane (eds.). Land and Language in Cape York Peninsula and the Gulf Country. John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 85–103. ISBN 978-9-027-26760-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Walmbaria (QLD)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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