Yindjibarndi people
The Yindjibarndi are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. They form the majority of Aboriginal people around Roebourne (the Millstream area).[1] Their traditional lands lie around the Fortescue River.[2]
Language
Yindjibarndi, with around 1000 speakers has been called the most innovative descendant of then proto-Ngayarta language.[3] It is mutually intelligible with Kurruma. Due to their displacement in the colonisation process which forced them into Roebourne, many speakers are Ngarluma people who have adopted Yindjibarndi. Their spatial concepts regarding landscape of do not translate with any equivalent conceptual extension into English.[4][5]
Ecology
Traditionally, until the arrival of Europeans, the Yindjibarndi lived along the middle sector of the valley through which the Fortescue River runs, and the nearby uplands. Beginning in the 1860s pastoralists established cattle stations on their homeland, and the Yindjibarndi were herded into settlements. Today most of them are congregated in and around the traditional Ngarluma territory whose centre is Roebourne.[6]
Native title
The mining magnate Andrew Forrest head of Fortescue Metals Group, which works the Solomon iron ore hub on the Yindjibarndi's traditional land, waged a 14-year legal battle to assert the company's rights against the people's aspirations to have native title. In 2017, the Federal Court of Australia recognised that the Yindjibarndi had exclusive rights over some 2,700 square kilometres (1,000 sq mi), and the court reaffirmed its decision again in 2020 when FMG appealed to have the determination overturned.[7]
Notes
Citations
- Rodan 2004, p. 112, n.38.
- Traditional Country n.d.
- O'Grady & Hale 2004, p. 71.
- Mark & Turk 2003, pp. 29–45.
- Turk et al. 2012, pp. 368–391.
- Turk et al. 2012, p. 373.
- Jenkins 2020.
Sources
- "AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australia". AIATSIS. Retrieved 22 March 2022.
- Jenkins, Keira (29 May 2020). "Fortescue Metals Group has lost a High Court appeal to overturn Native Title rights over 2,700 square kilometres (1,000 sq mi) of land in the Pilbara, including the site of an iron ore mine". SBS. NITV.
- Mark, David M.; Turk, Andrew G (2003). "Landscape Categories in Yindjibarndi: Ontology, Environment and Language". In Kuhn, Werner; Worboys, Michael F.; Timpf, Sabine (eds.). Spatial Information Theory. Foundations of Geographic Information Science. Springer. pp. 29–45. ISBN 978-3-540-20148-9 – via Internet Archive.
- O'Grady, Geoff; Hale, Kenneth L. (2004). "The Coherence and distinctiveness of the Pama-Nyungan language family within the Australian linguistic phylum". In Bowern, Claire; Koch, Harold James (eds.). Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method. John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 69–91. ISBN 978-9-027-24761-2.
- Rodan, Debbie (2004). Identity and Justice: Conflicts, Contradictions and Contingencies. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-9-052-01197-4.
- "Tindale Tribal Boundaries" (PDF). Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Western Australia. September 2016.
- Turk, Andrew G; Mark, David M.; O'Meara, Caroline; Stea, David (2012). "Geography: Documenting Terms for Landscape Features". In Thieberger, Nick (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Fieldwork. Oxford University Press. pp. 368–391. ISBN 978-0-199-57188-8.
- "Yindjibarndi: The People and their Traditional Country". Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre. n.d. Retrieved 22 March 2022.