Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara


Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara, also known as APY, APY Lands or the Lands, is a large, sparsely populated local government area for Aboriginal people, located in the remote north west of South Australia. Some of the Aṉangu of the Western Desert cultural bloc, in particular Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra peoples, inhabit the Lands.
Governance of the area is determined by the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Land Rights Act 1981, whereby an elected executive board reports to the Premier of South Australia. The APY's administration centre is located at Umuwa.
A large portion of the APY Lands was formerly the North-West Aboriginal Reserve.

Time zone

Due to its links with the Northern Territory and proximity to the border, the APY Lands do not observe daylight savings unlike the rest of South Australia. The time zone observed throughout the year is Australian Central Standard Time, in line with Darwin rather than Adelaide.

History

Early history

The Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people had lived in this area for many thousands of years. Even after the British began to colonise the Australian continent from 1788 onwards, and the colonisation of South Australia from 1836, the aṉangu remained more or less undisturbed for many more years, apart from very occasional encounters with a variety of European explorers.

20th century

In 1921, with white settlement now beginning to encroach on the aṉangus traditional land, the South Australian Government proclaimed the North-West Aboriginal Reserve. This Reserve consisted of most of what is now known as the APY Lands, with the exception of the eastern part of the APY Lands, which was given over to pastoral leases to Europeans.
In 1937, the Presbyterian Church council, spearheaded by Charles Duguid, established the Ernabella Mission on the Lands at the place now known as Pukatja.
By the 1950s, many aṉangu were living at the Ernabella Mission, while many others lived at camps on pastoral leases on what are now the Lands, or nearby, where they would work. Those pastoral leases included Granite Downs, Everard Park, Victory Downs, De Rose Hill, Kenmore Park, and Mount Cavanagh.
In 1961, to prevent overcrowding at Ernabella Mission, the Church established what became the community of Amata, but which was originally known as Musgrave Park. At the same time the Church also established what is now the community of Kaltjiti, but which was then known as Fregon.
In 1968, what is now the community of Indulkana was established by the South Australian Government, as a base from which to provide welfare services to aṉangu living in camps on pastoral leases, where work was becoming increasingly difficult to find. At that time, the surrounding area was excised from pastoral leases and declared the Indulkana Aboriginal Reserve.
The body now known as Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara was formed in 1981 by the passing of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Land Rights Act 1981 by the Parliament of South Australia under Premier Don Dunstan, and includes the Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra groups.
"Ara Irititja" is a project of the APY, commenced in 1994 to identify, copy and electronically record historical materials about the Anangu. Its purpose is to prevent the loss of the history, and to allow the teaching of it to others in the community.

21st century

By 2007 the peoples of the region had not had any major economic development, apart from tourism, but there had been proposals to mine in the area. The opal fields of Mintabie came under separate governance that time.
The Musgrave Block in the Lands has been viewed as having billions of dollars in potential mineral deposits and petroleum. But anangu have been wary of opening up the area to mining, concerned about the impact on sacred sites and the environment. In 2003 mining companies were conducting discussions to try to allay these worries.
A 2004 parliamentary report on an inquiry by a select committee led by Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Terry Roberts examined the shortcomings of the 1981 Act, which had not addressed entrenched social and economic problems in the Lands. The review noted shortcomings in the delivery of human services and infrastructure, and identified a "need to address the issue of the overall governance of the AP Lands and to formalise arrangements within an Act of Parliament and/or the Constitution of Anangu Pitjantjatjara". After wide consultation and consideration of many submissions, the committee made 15 recommendations. One of these was the establishment of a permanent police presence, as one of several strategies used to combat the problems of petrol sniffing and family violence.
In July 2007 South Australia Police in co-operation with liquor outlets in Coober Pedy agreed to create a register of alcohol purchases, to enable police to identify persons who purchased large quantities of alcohol in Coober Pedy potentially for transportation into Aboriginal lands. Also in July, Commonwealth Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough offered federal help for a "drug and alcohol crackdown" in South Australian Aboriginal lands – such as the APY Lands.
In early August 2007, the Rann South Australian Labor Government announced A$ 34 million package to "improve well-being of Aboriginal people" in the APY Lands. $25m was to be spent on improving housing and most of the remaining $8m on law enforcement in Amata and Pukatja. In November, SA Police Commissioner Mal Hyde announced the signing of a new enterprise agreement for South Australia Police that would include incentive packages to lure police to work in rural and remote areas such as the Lands.
In May 2008, retired Supreme Court judge the Hon Ted Mullighan QC delivered his supplementary report to his Children in State Care Commission of Inquiry, entitled the "Children on Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands Commission of Inquiry – a Report into Sexual Abuse".
In December 2009 the South Australian Parliament passed the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Land Rights Amendment Bill, which was an amendment to the APY Land Rights Act 1981, the Opal Mining Act 1995, and by-laws under the APY Land Rights Act 1981, affecting the mainly non-Indigenous residents of the opal-mining town, Mintabie. This amendment changed the licensing system for residential and commercial premises effective 1 July 2012, allowing the Minister responsible for the Opal Mining Act to grant licences.
A 2017 report found many instances of non-compliance with the 2009 Amendment as well as other problems occurring in the settlement of Mintabie. It recommended closure of the township, with control reverting to APY. After an appeal by residents failed, the final eviction date for the township was set at 31 December 2019.
In March 2024, the Kulilaya Festival was held at Umuwa to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1981 APY Land Rights Act. It had been delayed for three years owing to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Artists, musicians, and dancers presented their history and stories to commemorate the occasion. The word kulilaya approximates to the meaning of "listen", and was the name of a land rights protest song that was sung frequently in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and since then sung regularly by the Ernabella Choir, the APY Choir, and the Iwiri Choir. Several inma ceremonies were performed, politicians from across the spectrum attended the festival, and performers included Dem Mob, Docker River Band, the Iwiri Choir, Mala, the Pukatja Band, and Desert Rain.

Geography and location

The Musgrave Ranges, straddling the border between South Australia and the Northern Territory and the Mann Ranges and Tomkinson Ranges, both in the north-west of South Australia, stretch from east to west on the southern side of the NT border. The APY area includes isolated ranges and hills and large sandhill plains, and APY people also have affiliations with land in the NT to the Petermann Ranges, and in Western Australia.

Geology

There is a large palaeovalley, a geological term for an ancient, buried river, underneath the APY Lands. A map of the geological formation, complete with scientific and technical terminology, has been translated into Pitjantjatjara by a team of translators, based on the English-language map developed by government agencies.
There is a long strip of limestone breaking through red soil near Fregon/Kaltjiti, where a new water source was found in 2019. The area is one of two places in the world which have landlocked tectonic plates, and drilling samples have been estimated to be between 5 and 10 million years old.

Adjoining land

To the north of the APY Lands, the MacDonnell Shire Council was created by the Northern Territory in 2008, renamed MacDonnell Region in 2014, spanning the south of the Territory from west to east. Western Australia lies to the west. The South Australian LGA to the south of APY Lands is Maralinga Tjarutja.
The Outback Communities Authority is not an LGA, but is the statutory authority responsible for the development of areas adjoining the APY Lands as well as other large areas, to "manage the provision of public services and facilities to outback communities" which are widely dispersed across the region.

Localities

The APY LGA encompasses a number of settlements of a range of sizes, many of them being located in the Musgrave Ranges. An interactive map shows the location of communities and further information about each on the Paper Tracker website.
The main communities include Indulkana, Mimili, Kaltjiti, Pukatja, Amata, Pipalyatjara, and Watarru; the larger homelands are Kalka, Kanpi, Nyapari and Yunyarinyi. The APY administration centre of the Lands is located at Umuwa.
Mintabie was an opal-mining town, leased back to the Government of South Australia between 1981 and 2019, when the residents were evicted.
The list of Aboriginal communities and homelands :