Considering Traditional Aboriginal Affiliations in the Act Region
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DRAFT REPORT ONLY CONSIDERING TRADITIONAL ABORIGINAL AFFILIATIONS IN THE ACT REGION NATALIE l<WOI< CONSULTANT ANTHROPOLOGIST Prepared for AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY GOVERNMENT FEBRUARY 2013 CONTENTS Preface ...................................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ............................................... ......... .............................. ......... .................................. 6 Note .............................................................................................................................................. 6 TINDALE'S MAP AND THE EARLY ETHNOGRAPHIC SOURCES............................................... 9 Mathews....................................................................................................................................... 9 Ngunawal....................................................................................................................................... 11 Ngarigo/Ngarigu........................................................................................................................... 13 Wolgal/Walgalu........................................................................................................................... 14 Richards ......................................................................................................................................... 16 Linguistic affinity and distinction ................................................................................................ 17 The Yuin family .............................................................................................................................. 17 'The Canberra language'............................................................................................................ 18 UNDERSTANDING ABORIGINAL ASSOCIATIONS TO COUNTRY .............................................. 19 Localised attachments and rights to country.......................................................................... 20 Local connections ................................... , .................................................................................... 21 Broader social and territorial relationships............................................................................. 23 Regional societies and cultural blocs ......................................................................................... 20 Ceremonial circuits ...................................................................................................................... 26 Beyond ceremony........................................................................................................................ 31 'The line' ........ ,............................................................................................................................... 32 Tribal enemies ............................................................................................................................... 33 CONSIDERING THE FINER DETAIL............................................................................................. 35 Jackson-Nakano............................................................................................................................. 35 Koch ................................................................................................................................................. 36 Nyamudy .................................................... ,................................................................................... 39 Hagen Hope ........................................................................... ....................................................... 41 1 Molonglo........................................................................................................................................ 41 Piallago and Kamberri/Ngambri ................................................................................................. 42 Onyong ........................................................................................................................................... 44 Ceremonies at Canberra ............................................................................................................... 46 Maintaining relationships with kin and country ....................................................................... 48 A note on language named tribes............................................................................................ 49 Conclusion...................................................................................................................................... 49 References .. ,; .................................................................................................................................. 53 2 MAPS The ACT and surrounding region ................................................................................................. 3 Tindale's tribal boundaries............................................................................................................ 6 Mathews' ceremonial types ........................................................................................................ 22 3 MAP ONE: THE AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY (ACT) AND SURROUNDING REGION 4 PREFACE On June 17 1828 the Surveyor Mitchell climbed to the summit of Marulan hill, near Goulburn, and from there surveyed - both professionally and lyrically - the outlying mountains. His Aboriginal companion, Primbrubna sang a number of songs for him, amongst them one which created an especially strong impression, The Kangaroo song seemed very poetical according to his description of it - one verse seemed to be a description of the implements, another the unsuccessful chase, another the night passing, another day break next day- another the chase and naming Worrong, Marulan and other mountains, and finally the death of the Kangaroo. I got him to repeat the words slowly, and then having written them down, I repeated them to him, when he said "Bel (not) stupid fellow you, like other white fellows" where I asked him to explain the meaning of each word - I found that one meant Kangaroo, another Emu, another limb, another liver, heart, etc. -which amused us a good deal, - the astronomy was full of figures of men and Kangaroos; the moon was once a black cockatoo (Mitchell cited Smith 1992:13) In this passage we are gifted with a rare glimpse of the significance with which the physical world was imbued within Aboriginal frames in the south-east. Clearly here, as elsewhere across Australia, the country was encrypted with signs of the travels and travails of ancestral dreaming figures whose physical forms became transfigured to create the features of the earthly terrain and the heavens. W~ become aware that the peaks of the Brindabellas and the Namadgi Ranges and the plains flanking the Molonglo and the Murrumbidgee were also interwoven with stories which the new comers were too insensible to be told. In this light we can only begin to grasp the massive shortfalls in understanding that Europeans held then and now about Aboriginal relationships to place and landed identity and about the web of human relationships devolving from shared spiritual connections. The efforts to make sense of Aboriginal associations to country in this report must be read with a mind to how much escaped the attention of those early observers upon whom this desk top based study relies and of how far European preoccupations stand from the traditional Aboriginal approach to country. 5 INTRODUCTION This report examines ethnographic, linguistic and historical sources relating to traditional Aboriginal associations to country for the broader ACT region. The research has been conducted with a view to identifying the Aboriginal cultural area(s) and group formations pertinent to this area at the time of the original intrusion of European explorers and first settlers. It should be borne in mind that this study was commissioned as a short, literature-based study only. For that reason the conclusions drawn are necessarily precursory in nature. It has not been possible within the present time frame to locate and fully consider all ofthe historical and archival material of relevance nor to analyse genealogical data which could shed further light on local associations and interrelationships across the broader region. Present research has not been directed to a consideration of individual family connections to country nor has it involved any community consultations. Pointed anthropological interviews with relevant family groups and close investigation of their particular family histories would likely enrich present understandings. As has been found elsewhere across the country {Sutton 2003), contemporary formations of landed identity, may be expected to reflect, albeit in transformed ways, underlying classical means of reckoning relationships between people and land. In all it should be borne in mind that early and traumatic disruption to traditional Aboriginal social structures and landed relationships - including the effects on the indigenous population of virulent diseases, violence and socio-economic marginalisation - combined with the poverty of the written record, undermine any confidence that a clear picture of the original territorial organisation could be attained. While drawing at points on information gleaned from the reports of early explorers, newspaper