Ngarrindjeri
The Ngarrindjeri people are the traditional Aboriginal Australian people of the lower Murray River, eastern Fleurieu Peninsula, and the Coorong of the southern-central area of the state of South Australia. The term Ngarrindjeri means "belonging to men", and refers to a "tribal constellation". The Ngarrindjeri actually comprised several distinct if closely related tribal groups, including the Jarildekald, Tanganekald, Meintangk and Ramindjeri, who began to form a unified cultural bloc after remnants of each separate community congregated at Raukkan, South Australia.
A descendant of these peoples, Irene Watson, has argued that the notion of Ngarrindjeri identity is a cultural construct imposed by settler colonialists, who bundled together and conflated a variety of distinct Aboriginal cultural and kinship groups into one homogenised pattern, now known as Ngarrindjeri.
Historical designation and usage
Sources disagree as to who the Ngarrindjeri were. The missionary George Taplin chose the term, spelling it as Narrinyeri, as a generic ethnonym to designate a unified constellation of several distinct tribes, and bearing the meaning of "belonging to people", as opposed to kringgari. Etymologically, it is thought to be an abbreviation of kornarinyeri and inyeri, a suffix indicating belongingness. It implied that those outside the group were not quite human. Other terms were available, for example, Kukabrak, but Taplin's authority popularised the other term.Later ethnographers and anthropologists have disagreed with Taplin's construction of the tribal federation of 18 lakinyeri. Ian D. Clark has called it a "reinvention of tradition". Norman Tindale and Ronald Murray Berndt in particular were critical both of Taplin and of each other's reevaluation of the evidence. According to Tindale, a close evaluation of his material suggests that his data pertains basically to the Jarildekald/Yaralde culture, and he limited their borders to Cape Jervis, whereas Berndt and his wife Catherine Berndt argued that the Ramindjeri component lived in proximity to Adelaide. The Berndts argued that, despite cultural links, there was no political unity to warrant the "nation" or "confederacy".
Country
According to David Horton's map "Aboriginal Australia", the Ngarrindjeri lands lie along the Coorong coastline, from Victor Harbor on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in the north, to Cape Jaffa in the south. According to the map, the lands extend inland just north of Murray Bridge, receding to a wide coastal strip west of the Murray River lower lakes, but extending further inland in the south to a point near the state border at Coonawarra. The lands include both of the Murray lower lakes, Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert.History
Pre-contact history
Archaeology, particularly in excavations conducted at Roonka Flat, which affords one of the most outstanding sites for investigating "pre–European contact Aboriginal burial populations in Australia", has revealed that the traditional territory of the Ngarrindjeri has been inhabited since the Holocene period, beginning around 8,000 BCE down to around 1840 CE.History after contact
and sealers had been visiting the South Australian coast since 1802 and by 1819 there was a permanent camp on Karta, Kangaroo Island. Many of these men were escaped convicts, sealers, and whalers who had brought Tasmanian Aboriginal women with them but they also raided the mainland for women, particularly Ramindjeri. Originally the most heavily populated area in Australia, a smallpox epidemic had travelled down the River Murray before colonisation by Britain, possibly killing a majority of the Ngarrindjeri. Funeral rites and cultural practices were disrupted, family groups merged and land use became altered. Songs from the time tell of the smallpox that came out of the Southern Cross in the east with a loud noise like a bright flash. In 1830 the first exploratory expedition reached the Ngarrindjeri lands and Charles Sturt noted that the people were already familiar with firearms.Numbering only 6000 at the time of colonisation in 1836 due to the epidemic, they are the only Aboriginal cultural group in Australia whose land lay within of a capital city to have survived as a distinct people with a population still living on the former mission at Raukkan. Pomberuk, on the banks of the Murray in Murray Bridge was the most significant Ngarrindjeri site. All 18 lakinyeri would meet there for corroborees. Around further down the river was Tagalang, a traditional trading camp where lakinyeri would gather to trade ochre, weapons and clothing. In the 1900s, Tailem Bend was assigned as a government ration depot supplying the Ngarrindjeri.
European settlement
The Ngarrindjeri were the first South Australian Aboriginal people to work with Europeans in large-scale economic operations, working as farmers, whalers and labourers. As early as 1836 it was reliably reported that Aboriginal crews were working at the whaling station at Encounter Bay, and that some boats were worked by entirely Aboriginal crews, and the Ngarrindjeri were employed in the processing of whale oil in exchange for meat, gin and tobacco, and reportedly treated as equals.George Taplin created the Raukkan mission on behalf of the Aborigines' Friends' Association in 1859. This established a settlement of the Ngarrindjeri people of the Coorong region at the mission, with some escaping the frontier wars that had decimated their population. The land was small, but the Ngarrindjeri people thrived for a generation by the use of commerce. They mastered a series of trades, such as saddlery, blacksmithing, carpentry, stonemasonry, and baking, and also established a fishing enterprise and a wool-washing plant. Many Aboriginal people became Christians during their settlement. They also survived by working seasonally in pastoral properties and received donations. The community eventually struggled to survive due the subdivision of pastoral properties for farms, which resulted in a shortage of seasonal work, and the refusal of the South Australian Government to acknowledge their ownership of the land and to raise the size of their reserve. In 1890, the wool-washing plant closed due a new irrigation scheme built on the upper Murray River, that reduced the river's downstream flow.
Following the colonisation of South Australia and the encroachment of Europeans into Ngarrindjeri lands, Pomberuk remained until the 1940s, the last traditional campsite with the remaining Aboriginal occupants forced to leave in 1943 by the new land owners, the Hume Pipe Company, and resettled by the local council and South Australian government.
After hearing that the Aboriginal settlement was to be cleared, Ronald and his wife Catherine Berndt, who were researching Aboriginal culture in the area, approached the last Chief Protector of Aborigines, William Penhall, and obtained a verbal promise that the clearance would not proceed as long as the senior Ngarrindjeri elder, 78-year-old Albert Karloan, was living. Shortly after the Berndts left to return to Sydney, Karloan was given an eviction order effective immediately. Adamant that only death would separate him from his land, Karloan travelled to Adelaide to seek help, but returned to his former home in Pomberuk on 2 February 1943. He died the following morning.
Now known as the Murray Bridge Railway Precinct and Hume Reserve, the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority seeks the renaming of Hume Reserve to Karloan Ponggi Reserve in honour of the old people who fought to retain the old ways. They have presented a development and management plan to preserve and develop the site as a memorial and an educational aid to reconciliation.
Hindmarsh Island bridge controversy
The Ngarrindjeri achieved a great deal of publicity in the 1990s due to their opposition to the construction of a bridge from Goolwa to Hindmarsh Island, which resulted in a Royal Commission and a High Court case in 1996. The Royal Commission found that claims of "secret women's business" on the island had been fabricated. However, in a case brought by the developers seeking damages for their losses, Federal Court judge Mr John von Doussa took issue with the findings of the Royal Commission, and in rejecting the claims, stated that he found Doreen Kartinyeri to be a credible witness.The evidence received by the Court on this topic is significantly different to that which was before the Royal Commission. Upon the evidence before this Court I am not satisfied that the restricted women's knowledge was fabricated or that it was not part of genuine Aboriginal tradition.
As a result of the Australia-wide 1995–2009 drought, water levels in Lakes Albert and Alexandrina dropped to the extent that traditional burial grounds, which had been under water, were then exposed.
Language
The first linguistic study of Ngarrindjeri dialects was conducted by the Lutheran missionary H.A.E. Meyer in 1843. He collected 1750 words, mainly from the Ramindjeri dialect at Encounter Bay. Taplin gathered many more words from several dialects, including Yaraldi and Portawalun, from the people who congregated around the Point MacLeay mission on Lake Alexandrina, and his dictionary had 1668 English entries. Other linguistic data gleaned since has enabled the compilation of a modern Ngarrindjeri dictionary containing 3,700 items. It is now classified, together with Yaralde, as one of the five languages of the Lower Murray Areal group.Culture
The Dreaming
Many sites of Dreaming significance are located along the River Murray. Near the confluence of the Murray River with Lake Alexandrina is Murungun, home to a bunyip called Muldjewangk. An ancestral hero named Ngurunderi chased an enormous Murray cod named Pondi from a stream in central New South Wales. In fleeing, Pondi created the River Murray, and contiguous lagoons from its flailing tail. Kauwira is where Ngurunderi forced Pondi to turn sharply south. The straight section of river to Peindjalong resulted from Pondi fleeing in fear after being speared in the tail. The twin peaks, large permanent sandhills of Mount Misery on the eastern shore of Lake Alexandrina are known as Lalangenggul or Lalanganggel and represent where Ngurunderi brought his rafts ashore to make camp. Ngurunderi cut up Pondi at Raukkan, throwing the pieces into the water, where each piece became a species of fish.While an established Dreaming existed, the various family groups each had their own variations. For example, some said Ngurunderi created the fish on the coast, other family groups believe he created them where the river enters Lake Alexandrina and some said that it was where the fresh water meets the salt. They also shared some Dreaming stories with tribes in New South Wales and Victoria.
In the late 1980s, the Dreaming stories were collected and one related to a creation story involving Thukabi, a turtle. There was no mention of Thukabi in the anthropological record and this example was later used as evidence for the survival of Ngarrindjeri stories that were unknown to anthropologists in support of the secret women's business.
The bunyip appears in Ngarrindjeri dreaming as a water spirit called the Muldjewangk or Mulyawonk, which would get anyone who took more than their fair share of fish from the waterways, or take children if they got too close to the water. The stories conveyed practical messages to ensure long-term survival of the Ngarrindjeri, embodying care for country and its people.