Arabana people


The Arabana, also known as the Ngarabana, are an Aboriginal Australian people of South Australia.

Name

The older tribal autonym was Ngarabana, which may have been misheard by white settlers as Arabana, the term now is generally accepted by new generations of the Ngarabana.

Language

, like Wangganguru with which it shares a 90% overlap in vocabulary, is a member of the Karnic subgroup of the Pama-Nyungan language.

Country

In Norman Tindale's estimation, the Arabana controlled some of tribal land. They were present at the Neales River to the west of Lake Eyre, and west as far as the Stuart Range; Macumba Creek. Southwards their lands extended to Coward Springs. Their terrain also took in Oodnadatta, Lora Creek and Lake Cadibarrawirracanna.
The neighbouring tribes were the Kokata to the west, with the frontier between the two marked by the scarp of the western tableland near Coober Pedy. To their east were the Wangkanguru.

Native title

A native title claim was lodged with the National Native Title Tribunal on 16 January 1998 by Arabana elder Reg Dodd, on behalf of his people. In 2012, a Federal Court determination in the matter of Dodd v the State of South Australia gave the Arabana people native title to over, including Anna Creek Station and other pastoral leases, along with Lake Eyre. The area also included Elliot Price Conservation Park, Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre National Park, and Wabma Kadarbu Mound Springs Conservation Park, along with the towns of Marree, William Creek, and Oodnadatta. The Tribunal found that the Arabana maintained strong and enduring connections to country, each other and their culture.
The Arabana Corporation are the native title holders of the land,
In October 2025, it was alleged that the owners of Anna Creek Station had built illegal dams on rivers and waterholes on the property between 2017 and 2025, including a dam wall around long across Balta-Baltana Creek. The earthworks contravened the Aboriginal Heritage Act, the Natural Resources Management Act and the Landscape South Australia Act.

Mythology

Several traditional stories are well documented, especially that regarding a man-eating buzzard and his eaglehawk mate. The chief protagonists are three animals:
The Arabana were interviewed at Old Peake Station and Thantyiwanparda in the nearby gidgee scrub by Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis James Gillen over a ten-day period in August 1903 for a specific purpose. Their earlier work had argued that the truly "primitive" nature of the Arrernte was indicated by the fact that their totemic identities came from the spirit responsible for making individuals' mothers pregnant. James Frazer adopted this to buttress his theories on the development phases of "primitive societies". A Scottish amateur ethnographer Andrew Lang contested their interpretations of the Arrernte, arguing that they were not "primitive", a label he argued was more appropriate to their near neighbours the Arabana, who traced descent through the mother and linked their totemic system to exogamy. It was to address this challenge that accounted for Spencer and Gillen's return to Arabana lands.
Today, cross-cultural research collaborations are building on Arabana traditional knowledge and colonial and pastoral experiences to develop new ways of approaching modelling climate change.

Social organisation

The Arabana were divided into kin groups, whose respective territories were called wadlu.
Their moieties were named Mathari and Kararru.

Alternative names

  • Arabuna, Arrabunna, Arrabonna, Arubbinna
  • Arapani
  • Arapina
  • Ngarabana
  • Nulla
  • Rabuna
  • Urapuna, Urabuna, Urabunna, Urroban
  • Wangarabana
  • Wongkurapuna, Wangarabunna
  • Yendakarangu
Source:

Some words

  • kutyu, ritual assassin, kurdaitcha
  • thanthani also the name of a totem
Source: