Ngalia (Western Desert)

See also: Mantjintjarra Ngalia

Not to be confused with Ngalia (Northern Territory).

The Ngalia, or Ngalea, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Western Desert cultural bloc resident in land extending from Western Australia to the west of South Australia.^[1] They are not to be confused with the Ngalia of the Northern Territory.^[2]

Ngalia
People
Ethnicity	Aboriginal Australian
Location	Western Australia South Australia

Country

The Ngalia's traditional lands are around the salt lake areas, such as the Serpentine Lakes in the Great Victoria Desert, northwest of Ooldea, South Australia, in what is now the Mamungari Conservation Park. Norman Tindale estimated their tribal lands as covering an extension of some 15,000 square miles (39,000 km²).^[3]

Language

The Ngalia language, also known as Ooldean, is a dialect of the Western Desert language.^[1]

Alternative names

• Nangga ('men' in the sense that they had undergone circumcision)
• Nanggaranggu
• Nanggarangku (Pitjantjatjara exonym bearing the meaning of 'hostile men')
• Ngalia, Ngalija
• Ngaliawongga
• Tangara
• Willoorara ((people of the) 'west')
• Windakan (applied to their language, and also to the Wirangu)

Source: Tindale 1974, p. 215

Notable people

• Kado Muir, artist, anthropologist and politician

Notes

Citations

1. C2 Ngalia at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
2. Tindale 1974, p. 233.
3. Tindale 1974, p. 215.

Sources

• Bates, Daisy (1918). "Aborigines of the West Coast of South Australia; vocabularies and ethnological notes". Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia. 42. Adelaide: 152–167 – via BHL.
• Campbell, T. D.; Lewis, A. J. (1926). "The aborigines of South Australia: anthropometric descriptive and other observations recorded at Ooldea". Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia. 50. Adelaide: 183–191 – via BHL.
• Elkin, A. P. (September 1931). "The Social Organization of South Australian Tribes". Oceania. 2 (1). Adelaide: 44–73. doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.1931.tb00022.x. JSTOR 40327353.
• Howitt, Alfred William (1904). The native tribes of south-east Australia (PDF). Macmillan.
• Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Ngalea (SA)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University Press. ISBN 978-0-708-10741-6.