Walmbaria

The Dingaal people, also known as Walmbarddha or Walmbaria, are an Aboriginal Australian people of Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland.

Dingaal may be a clan name, and they may be related to the Guugu Yimithirr people.

People and language names

A 2010 source reported that the Walmbaria represented themselves as Dingaal, and in land claims the Walmbaar Aboriginal Corporation defines the Dingaal they represent as adult people of the Dingaal clan or people or community having a Dingaal patrilineal descent, or who were adopted by such a person, A Dingaal father is someone who descends on their father's side from any of the Baru, Yoren, or Charlies families.^[1] A 2009 native title determination described the Dingaal people as a clan, which is passed down through patrilineal descent, "of the Baru, Yoren or Charlie families".^[2] As of April 2024^[update] the Walmbaar Aboriginal Corporation is chaired by a Dingaal man called Kenneth McLean.^[3]

The website Dingaals Lizard Island states that the island has been in the custodianship of "Dingaal's Family", or "the Dingaal People", for thousands of years. As of April 2024^[update] the senior elder of the Dingaals is Gordon Charlie.^[4] The Dingaals called the island "Dyiigurra", and the website mentions that "local Dingiil Aboriginal people have also been known to call the island Jiigurru".^[5] According to the Cairns Institute^[6] and Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, the Dingaal people are the traditional owners of the Lizard Island group.^[7]

The Walmbaria name for their language was, according to Norman Tindale,^{[lower-alpha 1]} Yalgawara, which was spoken in two dialect versions, one for the mainland branch, the other for the islanders.^[9]

However, there has been confusion about which names apply to which people and languages in the area, and AIATSIS has reclassified a number of the languages in their AUSTLANG database:^[10]

Previously the AUSTLANG reference name for code Y61 was Flinders Island language; in contrast the Pathways Languages Thesaurus heading for this code was Walmbaria / Gambilmugu language and people.

Walmbaria is listed as a language by Oates (1970:201) and Tindale (1974:187) spoken on and near Flinders Island. It has the same referents as Walmbarddha Y147. Sutton indicates Walmbaria is based on a Flinders Island language term 'Aba Walmbarriya' referring to all (other) peoples of Princess Charlotte Bay but excluding Flinders Island people (1993:32).

Tindale and Hale (1933:69) wrote that Walmbaria people lived on Flinders Island and Bathurst Head and spoke Yalgawarra. Yalgawarra is not a language, it refers to a clan affiliated with Flinders Island language Y67 (Sutton, 1993:33).

According to AIATSIS, one people name is Walmbarddha (code Y147),^[11] and the other, Ama Ambilmungu. With regard to the latter, "Gambiilmugu is a Guugu Yimidhirr name for this same clan affiliated with the Barrow Point language Y63.1, i.e. Ama Ambilmungu (Y62) (Sutton, 1993:34). Previously, the Languages Thesaurus listed Gambilmugu as an alternate name for Walmbaria under the code Y61 (see also Y147)".^[12]

Country

The Walmbaria's traditional lands are estimated to have encompassed approximately 50 square miles (130 km²), extending over the reefs and Flinders island group north of Princess Charlotte Bay.^[13] Their southern limits were between a site called Alumukuan in Bathurst Bay and the eastern extremity of Charlotte Bay.^[9]

David Horton's 1996 representation of Tindale's map shows the lands of the Guugu Yimithirr people extending from south of Hope Vale to an area which covers Lizard Island, while Flinders Island is off the coast of the Mutumui people's land.^[14]

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority states on their website that the traditional lands of the Guugu Yimidhirr Warra Nation extend from Lizard Island to the Hopevale region.^[15]

People and social organisation

The Walmbaria were divided into two main clans:

• The Wureimnu were principally islanders
• The Tartali. (Bathurst Head)^[9]

Their marriage laws were, by the time late ethnographers explored them, based on a two class system, consisting of:

• (A) Owaimini
• (B) Ungawu.^[16]

Tindale in his later report states that the Walmbaria were essentially islanders who only came over to the continental mainland, at Bathurst Head and Cape Melville. "on sufferance."^[13]

The ritual extraction of a tooth (tooth avulsion) was practised on both sexes, with the removal of either the right or left upper incisor.^[17]

History

The Walmbaria used to be "recruited" for work on luggers that worked the maritime resources of this area. Some Flinders Island men were involved in "the Wild Duck massacre", in which four European sailors were killed. Though the tribes are not named, one report from a crew member with Captain Blackwood who landed at a spot just south of Cape Melville in 1843 has provided a linguistic clue.^[18] He stated that several Aboriginal people there were surprised by the captain's dog, and yelling angooa. This word was taken to mean "dog", but analysis suggests that it was a form of a Barrow Point noun angwurr ("dog's bark"), and a Flinders Island verb nganggwoyi ('to bark'.) The logical surmise is that the Flinders and Barrow Point peoples shared the same areas.^[19]

By 1926 a survey found that the Walmbaria remnant which had managed to survive the incursions of white settlement numbered a mere 25, 10 of them male, the rest female, with no children known to exist, the youngest person encountered being 18 years old.^[20]

The last survivor of Flinders Island language-speaking Aba Agathi clan was Chinaman Gilbert.^[21]

Material culture

The Flinders island Walmbaria and Bathurst Head women used two kinds of mallet for pulping food and breaking oyster shells. Their men manufactured a heavier and thicker ironwood mallet than the otun, similar to the drum gong used in Melanesia, though they also used the normal regional variety employed to this end by the Barungguan and Mutumui.^[22]

Alternative names and spellings

• Walmbar
• Yalnga-bar (Yalnga = Cape Melville).^[13]
• Alei (saltwater, an Ongwara clan exonym)^[9]

Footnotes

1. There are problems with this. See Peter Sutton, who concludes that "languages in the area under consideration do not have names, at least not in the usual sense." Yalgawara/Yalgapara, Sutton argues, would actually be an exonym for a specific clan.^[8]

References

1. Gover 2010, p. 33n.58.
2. Greenwood J (29 May 2009). "Compensation application by RNTBC dismissed: Walmbaar Aboriginal Corporation v Queensland [2009] FCA 579" (PDF). National Native Title Tribunal. The Hopevale determination recognised the native title rights and interests held by 13 clans, including the Dingaal People, in an area on the eastern side of Cape York. In February 2002, an order was made that Walmbaar 'is the prescribed body corporate which, after becoming a registered native title body corporate, will perform the functions mentioned' in s. 57(3) of the NTA 'for the Dingaal Clan'. The court noted that, for the purposes of both the rules and the Hopevale determination: [T]he Dingaal clan means all persons born of a Dingaal father or Aboriginal children adopted by a Dingaal father and a Dingaal father is a male person of patrilineal descent of the Baru, Yoren or Charlie families. The Dingaal family means the Yoren and/or Baru and/or Charlie families of Hopevale and their patrilineal descendents...
3. Hinchliffe, Joe (10 April 2024). "Great Barrier Reef discovery overturns belief Aboriginal Australians did not make pottery, archaeologists say". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
4. "Home". Dingaals Lizard Island. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
5. "History". Dingaals Lizard Island. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
6. "An Update on the Lizard Island Archaeological Project: Investigating Dingaal Seascapes on the Great Barrier Reef, Far North Queensland". The Cairns Institute. 1 September 2017. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
7. "Lizard Island: Nature, culture and history". Parks and forests. 22 January 2024. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
8. Sutton 1979, pp. 94–101, p.100.
9. Hale & Tindale 1933, p. 69.
10. Y61 Flinders Island (retired) at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
11. Y147 Walmbarddha at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
12. Y62 Ama Ambilmungu at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
13. Tindale 1974, p. 187.
14. Horton, David R. (1996). "Map of Indigenous Australia". AIATSIS. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
15. "Reef Traditional Owners". Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
16. Hale & Tindale 1933, pp. 79–80.
17. Hale & Tindale 1933, p. 76.
18. Sutton 2016, p. 90.
19. Sutton 2016, pp. 90–91.
20. Hale & Tindale 1933, p. 77.
21. Sutton 2016, p. 92.
22. Rigsby, Allen & Hafner 2015, p. 8.

Sources

• "AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australia". AIATSIS. 14 May 2024.
• Gover, Kirsty (2010). Tribal Constitutionalism: States, Tribes, and the Governance of Membership. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199587094.
• Hale, H. M.; Tindale, N.B. (1933). "Aborigines of Princess Charlotte Bay, North Queensland". Records of the South Australian Museum. 5 (1). Adelaide: 64–116.
• Rigsby, Bruce; Allen, Lindy; Hafner, Diane (December 2015). Roberts, Amy; McCaul, Kim (eds.). "The Legacy of Norman B. Tindale at Princess Charlotte Bay in 1927: Lamalama Engagement with Museum Collections" (PDF). Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia. 39 (Special Edition: Norman B. Tindale's Research Legacy and the Cultural Heritage of Indigenous Australians): 1–25. ISSN 1034-4438.
• Sharp, R. Lauriston (March 1939). "Tribes and Totemism in North-East Australia". Oceania. 9 (3): 254–275. doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.1939.tb00232.x. JSTOR 40327744.
• Sutton, Peter (1979). "Australian language names" (PDF). In Wurms, Stefan A. (ed.). Australian linguistic studies. Pacific Linguistics. pp. 87–105. ISBN 978-0-858-83185-8.
• Sutton, Peter (2005). "Science and sensibility on a foul frontier: At Flinders Island" (PDF). In Rigsby, Bruce; Peterson, Nicolas (eds.). Donald Thomson: The Man and Scholar. Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia /Museum Victoria. pp. 143–58. ISBN 978-0-908-29021-5.
• Sutton, Peter (2016). "The Flinders Islands and Cape Melville people in history". In Verstraete, Jean-Christophe; Hafner, Diane (eds.). Land and Language in Cape York Peninsula and the Gulf Country. John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 85–103. ISBN 978-9-027-26760-3.
• Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Walmbaria (QLD)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University.