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{{Short description|Aboriginal Australian group of southern NSW and the ACT}}
{{hatnote|This page is for the Indigenous Australian group. For their language see [[Ngunnawal language]]. For the suburban district in the Australian Capital Territory, see [[Ngunnawal, Australian Capital Territory]].}}
{{about|the Indigenous Australian group|the language|Ngunnawal language|the suburban district in the Australian Capital Territory|Ngunnawal, Australian Capital Territory}}
{{citations|date=July 2021}}
{{citations|date=July 2021}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2018}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2018}}
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==Language==
==Language==
{{main|Ngunnawal language}}
{{main|Ngunnawal language}}
[[Ngunnawal language|Ngunnawal]], or Gundungurra, is an [[Australian Aboriginal language]], the traditional language of the Ngunnawal and [[Gandangara]] peoples. There are contradictory claims as to whether they are one language or two. The name Burragorang is applied to either. A dialect of the Gundungurra or Burragorang people is classified, together with [[Ngarigo language|Ngarigo]], as one of several [[Southern Tablelands|southern tableland]] languages of New South Wales.{{sfn|Dixon|2002|p=xxxv}}
[[Ngunnawal language|Ngunnawal]] and Gundungurra are [[Australian Aboriginal language]]s from the [[Pama–Nyungan languages|Pama-Nyungan]] [[Language family|family]], the traditional languages of the Ngunnawal and [[Gandangara]] peoples respectively. The two varieties are very closely related, being considered dialects of the one (unnamed) language, in the technical, linguistic sense of those terms.{{sfn|Koch|2102|p=17–18}}{{incomplete short citation|date=May 2023}} One classification of these varieties groups them with [[Ngarigo language|Ngarigo]], as one of several [[Southern Tablelands|southern tableland]] languages of New South Wales.{{sfn|Dixon|2002|p=xxxv}}


==Country==
==Country==
[[File:Ngunawal Lands.png|thumb|Map of the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal peoples of New South Wales.{{efn|This map is indicative only.}}]]
[[File:Ngunawal Lands.png|thumb|Traditional lands of the Ngunnawal peoples of New South Wales{{efn|This map is indicative only.}}]]
When first encountered by European settlers in the 1820s, the Ngunawal-speaking Indigenous people lived around this area.
When first encountered by European colonisers in the 1820s, the Ngunawal-speaking Indigenous people lived around this area.


Their tribal country according to the early ethnographer, [[Robert Hamilton Mathews|R. H. Mathews]], stated their country extended from [[Goulburn, New South Wales|Goulburn]] to [[Yass, New South Wales|Yass]] and [[Boorowa|Burrowa]] southwards as far as [[Lake George (New South Wales)|Lake George]] to the east and [[Goodradigbee River|Goodradigbee]] to the west.{{sfn|Mathews|1904|p=294}} To the south of Lake George was the county of the Nyamudy speaking a Ngarigo dialect. Recent research by [[Harold Koch (linguist)|Harold Koch]] (2011) and others shows that the Ngunnawal country was primarily the land surrounding the Yass River extending between Lake George to the east and the Murrumbidgee to the west, while the southern boundary of the Ngunnawal people was north of Canberra, approximately on a line from Gundaroo to Wee Jasper. Sometimes the whole of the Burragorang language speaking area as far north as near Young is included as Ngunnawal, giving them a population in the 1830s of well over a thousand people.
Their tribal country according to the early ethnographer, [[Robert Hamilton Mathews|R. H. Mathews]], stated their country extended from [[Goulburn, New South Wales|Goulburn]] to [[Yass, New South Wales|Yass]] and [[Boorowa, New South Wales|Boorowa]] southwards as far as [[Lake George (New South Wales)|Lake George]] to the east and [[Goodradigbee River|Goodradigbee]] to the west.{{sfn|Mathews|1904|p=294}} To the south of Lake George was the county of the Nyamudy speaking a Ngarigo dialect. Recent research by [[Harold Koch (linguist)|Harold Koch]] (2011) and others shows that the Ngunnawal country was primarily the land surrounding the Yass River extending between Lake George to the east and the [[Murrumbidgee River|Murrumbidgee]] to the west, while the southern boundary of the Ngunnawal people was north of [[Canberra]], approximately on a line from Gundaroo to Wee Jasper. Sometimes the whole of the Burragorang language speaking area as far north as near Young is included as Ngunnawal, giving them a population in the 1830s of well over a thousand people.


A major battle for ownership of the country was fought at Sutton between an invading Ngunnawal band and the Nyamudy inhabitants, which the latter won, establishing the Ngunnawal country, which did not extend further south along the [[Yass River]] than Gundaroo.{{cn|date=July 2021}}
A major battle for ownership of the country was fought at Sutton between an invading Ngunnawal band and the Nyamudy inhabitants, which the former won, establishing the Ngunnawal country, which did not extend further south along the [[Yass River]] than Gundaroo.{{cn|date=July 2021}}


==People==
==People==
The Ngunawal people were northern neighbours of the Nyamudy/Namadgi people who lived to the south on the Limestone Plains. The [[Wiradjuri]] (to the west) and [[Gandangara people|Gundungurra]] (to the north) peoples also bordered the Ngunnawal. However an alternative view is that the Ngunnawal people were not a people but the southern dialect of the Wallaballoa clan whose territory extended north from Yass to north of Borrowa.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}
The Ngunawal people were northern neighbours of the Nyamudy/Namadgi people who lived to the south on the Limestone Plains. The [[Wiradjuri]] (to the west) and [[Gandangara people|Gundungurra]] (to the north) peoples also bordered the Ngunnawal.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}


==Dispute over traditional ownership==
==Dispute over traditional ownership==
At present,{{when|date=July 2021}} three groups contest ownership in the Canberra area: the Ngambri, the Ngarigo, and the [[Walgalu people|Walgalu speaking]] Ngambri-Guumaal, represented by Shane Mortimer, with widespread connections from across the [[Snowy Mountains]] down to the [[Blue Mountains (New South Wales)|Blue Mountains]].{{cn|date=July 2021}}
At present,{{when|date=July 2021}} three groups contest [[Aboriginal traditional owner|ownership]] in the Canberra area: the Ngambri, the Ngarigo, and the [[Walgalu people|Walgalu speaking]] Ngambri-Guumaal, represented by Shane Mortimer, with widespread connections from across the [[Snowy Mountains]] up to the [[Blue Mountains (New South Wales)|Blue Mountains]].{{cn|date=July 2021}}


According to settlers living in the area in the 1830s, such as quoted in the ''[[Queanbeyan Age]]'', there were three groups in the region: the Ngunnawal, the Nyamudy/Namadgi and the Ngarigo.{{cn|date=July 2021}}
According to settlers living in the area in the 1830s, such as quoted in the ''[[Queanbeyan Age]]'', there were three groups in the region: the Ngunnawal, the Nyamudy/Namadgi and the Ngarigo.{{cn|date=July 2021}}
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In 2012 research for the ACT Government, "Our Kin, Our Country", found "there is no basis within the description of the country supplied by Tindale. The research confirmed that the language spoken in the Canberra region was a dialect of Ngarigu, 'related to but distinguishable from the dialects spoken at Tumut and Monaro'". The report stated that evidence gathered from the mid-1700s onward was too scant to support any family's claims to be original owners.{{sfn|Towell|2013}}
In 2012 research for the ACT Government, "Our Kin, Our Country", found "there is no basis within the description of the country supplied by Tindale. The research confirmed that the language spoken in the Canberra region was a dialect of Ngarigu, 'related to but distinguishable from the dialects spoken at Tumut and Monaro'". The report stated that evidence gathered from the mid-1700s onward was too scant to support any family's claims to be original owners.{{sfn|Towell|2013}}


Some Canberra-area people with part Aboriginal heritage in inland southeast Australia, including [[Matilda House (activist)|Matilda House]], identify as Ngambri. [[Shane Mortimer]] defines himself as one of the Ngambri-Guumwaal, Guumwaal being a language name said to mean "high country".{{sfn|Osborne|2016}} This claim to be a distinct nation is disputed by many other local Aboriginal people who say that the Ngambri are a small family who took their name from the Sullivan's Creek area located to the east of [[Black Mountain (Australian Capital Territory)|Black Mountain]] in the late 1990s.{{sfn|ABC Australia|2005}}
Some Canberra-area Aboriginal people in inland southeast Australia, including [[Matilda House (activist)|Matilda House]], identify as Ngambri. [[Shane Mortimer]] defines himself as one of the Ngambri-Guumwaal, Guumwaal being a language name said to mean "high country".{{sfn|Osborne|2016}} This claim to be a distinct nation is disputed by many other local Aboriginal people who say that the Ngambri are a small family who took their name from the Sullivan's Creek area located to the east of [[Black Mountain (Australian Capital Territory)|Black Mountain]] in the late 1990s.{{sfn|ABC Australia|2005}}

==Native title==
==Native title==
The earliest direct evidence for [[indigenous Australian|Indigenous]] occupation in the area comes from a rock shelter near the area of Birrigai near [[Tharwa, Australian Capital Territory|Tharwa]], which has been dated to approximately 20,000 years ago. However, it is likely (based on older sites known from the surrounding regions) that human occupation of the region goes back considerably further.{{cn|date=July 2021}}
The earliest direct evidence for Aboriginal occupation in the area comes from a rock shelter near the area of Birrigai near [[Tharwa, Australian Capital Territory|Tharwa]], which has been dated to approximately 25,000 years ago. However, it is likely (based on older sites known from the surrounding regions) that human occupation of the region goes back considerably further.{{cn|date=July 2021}}


They were gradually displaced from the Yass area beginning in the 1820s when graziers began to occupy the land there. Some people worked at properties in the region. In 1826 many Aboriginal people at Lake George protested an incident involving a shepherd and an Aboriginal woman, though the protesters moved away peacefully.{{Citation needed|date=February 2007}}
They were gradually displaced from the Yass area beginning in the 1820s when graziers began to occupy the land there. Some people worked at properties in the region. In 1826 many Aboriginal people at Lake George protested an incident involving a shepherd and an Aboriginal woman, though the protesters moved away peacefully.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://yasshistory.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Eric-Bell-book-April-2011.pdf|title=Looking Back: My Story|last=Bell|first=Eric Bernard|year=2011|page=24|quote=George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines in Victoria, who toured through the Yass area in 1844 and stayed with Hamilton Hume, commented “The Yass and Bathurst Blacks in the early settling of the Colony were said to have been troublesome, and that in consequence Commandoes had gone out against them”, White and Cane repeat this. They also mention “one of these encounters involved the colonial government sending a detachment of soldiers in 1826 to disperse a large and hostile gathering of Ngunnawal Aborigines at Lake George”. My friend, Dr Ann Jackson-Nakano, who has made a close study of the Lake George communities gives a detailed background to this hostility. “Communities banded together in large numbers to avenge the taking of their women by European stockmen at Lake George and Lake Bathurst. It incensed these groups enough when their Indigenous neighbours stole wives, as Govett and others described it, but they would not tolerate their women being taken by Europeans.” (p 25; Weereewa History Series Volume 1).}}</ref>


Historical records of Australia record the last "[[Half-Caste Act|full-blooded]]" Ngunnawal person, Nellie Hamilton, dying in 1897, however, this is disputed by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, as there are many Ngunnawal people still around today.{{sfn|McKeon|1995}}
Historical records of Australia record the last "[[Half-Caste Act|full-blooded]]" Ngunnawal person, Nellie Hamilton, dying in 1897, however, this is disputed by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, as there are many Ngunnawal people still around today.{{sfn|McKeon|1995}}
Line 61: Line 63:
| ref = {{harvid|ABC Australia|2005}}
| ref = {{harvid|ABC Australia|2005}}
}}
}}
*{{Cite book| chapter = Aboriginal languages and social groups in the Canberra region: interpreting the historical documentation
| last = Koch | first = Harold | year = 2010
| author-link = Harold Koch
| title = Indigenous Language and Social Identity: papers in honour of Michael Walsh
| publisher = [[Pacific Linguistics]]
| chapter-url = https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/57031
}}
*{{cite book| title = Considering traditional Aboriginal affiliations in the ACT region: Draft Report
*{{cite book| title = Considering traditional Aboriginal affiliations in the ACT region: Draft Report
| last = Kwok | first = Natalie
| last = Kwok | first = Natalie

Latest revision as of 04:13, 12 May 2024

This article is about the Indigenous Australian group. For the language, see Ngunnawal language. For the suburban district in the Australian Capital Territory, see Ngunnawal, Australian Capital Territory.

Ngunnawal art, possibly an echidna

The Ngunnawal people, also spelt Ngunawal, are an Aboriginal people of southern New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory in Australia.

Language

[edit]
Main article: Ngunnawal language

Ngunnawal and Gundungurra are Australian Aboriginal languages from the Pama-Nyungan family, the traditional languages of the Ngunnawal and Gandangara peoples respectively. The two varieties are very closely related, being considered dialects of the one (unnamed) language, in the technical, linguistic sense of those terms.[1][incomplete short citation] One classification of these varieties groups them with Ngarigo, as one of several southern tableland languages of New South Wales.[2]

Country

[edit]
Traditional lands of the Ngunnawal peoples of New South Wales[a]

When first encountered by European colonisers in the 1820s, the Ngunawal-speaking Indigenous people lived around this area.

Their tribal country according to the early ethnographer, R. H. Mathews, stated their country extended from Goulburn to Yass and Boorowa southwards as far as Lake George to the east and Goodradigbee to the west.[3] To the south of Lake George was the county of the Nyamudy speaking a Ngarigo dialect. Recent research by Harold Koch (2011) and others shows that the Ngunnawal country was primarily the land surrounding the Yass River extending between Lake George to the east and the Murrumbidgee to the west, while the southern boundary of the Ngunnawal people was north of Canberra, approximately on a line from Gundaroo to Wee Jasper. Sometimes the whole of the Burragorang language speaking area as far north as near Young is included as Ngunnawal, giving them a population in the 1830s of well over a thousand people.

A major battle for ownership of the country was fought at Sutton between an invading Ngunnawal band and the Nyamudy inhabitants, which the former won, establishing the Ngunnawal country, which did not extend further south along the Yass River than Gundaroo.[citation needed]

People

[edit]

The Ngunawal people were northern neighbours of the Nyamudy/Namadgi people who lived to the south on the Limestone Plains. The Wiradjuri (to the west) and Gundungurra (to the north) peoples also bordered the Ngunnawal.[citation needed]

Dispute over traditional ownership

[edit]

At present,[when?] three groups contest ownership in the Canberra area: the Ngambri, the Ngarigo, and the Walgalu speaking Ngambri-Guumaal, represented by Shane Mortimer, with widespread connections from across the Snowy Mountains up to the Blue Mountains.[citation needed]

According to settlers living in the area in the 1830s, such as quoted in the Queanbeyan Age, there were three groups in the region: the Ngunnawal, the Nyamudy/Namadgi and the Ngarigo.[citation needed]

The present dispute originated when the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory at the time, Jon Stanhope, inaccurately stated that "Ngambri is the name of one of a number of family groups that make up the Ngunnawal nation." He went on to say that "the Government recognises members of the Ngunnawal nation as descendants of the original inhabitants of this region." He made the error after talking with multiracial people of part Ngunnawal descent whose forebears had come from Yass in the 1920s to find work.[citation needed]

In 2012 research for the ACT Government, "Our Kin, Our Country", found "there is no basis within the description of the country supplied by Tindale. The research confirmed that the language spoken in the Canberra region was a dialect of Ngarigu, 'related to but distinguishable from the dialects spoken at Tumut and Monaro'". The report stated that evidence gathered from the mid-1700s onward was too scant to support any family's claims to be original owners.[4]

Some Canberra-area Aboriginal people in inland southeast Australia, including Matilda House, identify as Ngambri. Shane Mortimer defines himself as one of the Ngambri-Guumwaal, Guumwaal being a language name said to mean "high country".[5] This claim to be a distinct nation is disputed by many other local Aboriginal people who say that the Ngambri are a small family who took their name from the Sullivan's Creek area located to the east of Black Mountain in the late 1990s.[6]

Native title

[edit]

The earliest direct evidence for Aboriginal occupation in the area comes from a rock shelter near the area of Birrigai near Tharwa, which has been dated to approximately 25,000 years ago. However, it is likely (based on older sites known from the surrounding regions) that human occupation of the region goes back considerably further.[citation needed]

They were gradually displaced from the Yass area beginning in the 1820s when graziers began to occupy the land there. Some people worked at properties in the region. In 1826 many Aboriginal people at Lake George protested an incident involving a shepherd and an Aboriginal woman, though the protesters moved away peacefully.[7]

Historical records of Australia record the last "full-blooded" Ngunnawal person, Nellie Hamilton, dying in 1897, however, this is disputed by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, as there are many Ngunnawal people still around today.[8]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ This map is indicative only.

Citations

[edit]
  1. ^ Koch 2102, p. 17–18.
  2. ^ Dixon 2002, p. xxxv.
  3. ^ Mathews 1904, p. 294.
  4. ^ Towell 2013.
  5. ^ Osborne 2016.
  6. ^ ABC Australia 2005.
  7. ^ Bell, Eric Bernard (2011). "Looking Back: My Story" (PDF). p. 24. George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines in Victoria, who toured through the Yass area in 1844 and stayed with Hamilton Hume, commented "The Yass and Bathurst Blacks in the early settling of the Colony were said to have been troublesome, and that in consequence Commandoes had gone out against them", White and Cane repeat this. They also mention "one of these encounters involved the colonial government sending a detachment of soldiers in 1826 to disperse a large and hostile gathering of Ngunnawal Aborigines at Lake George". My friend, Dr Ann Jackson-Nakano, who has made a close study of the Lake George communities gives a detailed background to this hostility. "Communities banded together in large numbers to avenge the taking of their women by European stockmen at Lake George and Lake Bathurst. It incensed these groups enough when their Indigenous neighbours stole wives, as Govett and others described it, but they would not tolerate their women being taken by Europeans." (p 25; Weereewa History Series Volume 1).
  8. ^ McKeon 1995.

Sources

[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ngunnawal&oldid=1223440261"