Kawadji

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The Kawadji, or Uutaalnganu, [1] were an Indigenous Australian group of Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland. [2] The name is also used collectively for several tribes in this area.

Cape York Peninsula peninsula in Far North Queensland, Australia

Cape York Peninsula is a large remote peninsula located in Far North Queensland, Australia. It is the largest unspoiled wilderness in northern Australia. The land is mostly flat and about half of the area is used for grazing cattle. The relatively undisturbed eucalyptus-wooded savannahs, tropical rainforests and other types of habitat are now recognized and preserved for their global environmental significance, but native wildlife is threatened by introduced species and weeds. In 1606, Dutch sailor Willem Janszoon on board the Duyfken reached Australia as its first known European explorer, discovering the Cape York Peninsula.

Queensland North-east state of Australia

Queensland is the second-largest and third-most populous state in the Commonwealth of Australia. Situated in the north-east of the country, it is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean. To its north is the Torres Strait, with Papua New Guinea located less than 200 km across it from the mainland. The state is the world's sixth-largest sub-national entity, with an area of 1,852,642 square kilometres (715,309 sq mi).

Contents

Name

Kawadji formerly referred to a people, who inhabited Night Island and the coastal strip opposite. It now refers primarily to a modern aggregation of six tribes, collectively known by the same ethnonym kawadji which means 'people of the sandbeach' (pama malnkana). [2] [3] These tribes, the Umpithamu/Koko Ompindamo, Pakadji, Yintyingka, Otati, Umpila and Pontunj [4] were the traditional owners and users of the coastal areas east of the Great Dividing Range of northeastern Cape York from Oxford Bay to Princess Charlotte Bay. [5]

Night Island (Queensland)

Night Island is part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park west of Cape Melville, Queensland, Australia. It lies east of Coen between the first three-mile opening and the second three-mile opening of the Barrier Reef about 100 km south-east of Lockhart River. It is part of the Islands North of Port Stewart Important Bird Area. The indigenous people of the island were the Kawadji.

An ethnonym is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms and autonyms, or endonyms.

The Umpithamu, also once known to ethnographers as the Koko Ompindamo, are a contemporary Indigenous Australian people of the eastern Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland. Norman Tindale, transcribing their ethnonym Umpithamu as Umbindhamu, referred to them as a horde of the Barungguan.

Language

The Night Island Kawadji spoke, according to Norman Tindale, Yankonyu, a dialect variant of the Umpila language spoken by the Umpila and Pontunj, to whom they were closely related. [6] [7]

Norman Tindale Australian biologist

Norman Barnett Tindale AO was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist and ethnologist.

Umpila is an Aboriginal Australian language, or dialect cluster, of the Cape York Peninsula. It is spoken by about 100 Aboriginals, many of them elderly.

People

The traditional Kawadji of Night Island were a small population and intermarried with clans of the mainland Barungguan. [7]

The Barungguan are an indigenous Australian people of the Cape York Peninsula of Northern Queensland. The name is associated with three languages, Ganganda, Umpithamu and Morrobolam.

Economy

The Night Island Kawadji were known for their skill in building and then employing double-outrigger wooden canoes (tango) in adventurous voyages to outlying reefs where they would hunt for dugong, turtles, and the eggs of both sea birds and turtles. [5]

Dugong species of mammal

The dugong is a medium-sized marine mammal. It is one of four living species of the order Sirenia, which also includes three species of manatees. It is the only living representative of the once-diverse family Dugongidae; its closest modern relative, Steller's sea cow, was hunted to extinction in the 18th century. The dugong is the only strictly herbivorous marine mammal.

Alternative names

The following list of alternative names refers to the original people of Night Island.

The Kaantyu are an Indigenous Australian people of the Cape York Peninsula. They love in the area around the present day town of Coen. Most of their traditional tribal land is taken over for cattle stations. Kaantju refers to the hook of the yuli, their word for woomera.

Notes

    Citations

    1. ↑ Rigsby & Chase 2014, p. 313 n.4.
    2. 1 2 Tindale 1974.
    3. ↑ Thomson 1933, pp. 457–458.
    4. ↑ Thomson 1933, pp. 456–457.
    5. 1 2 Haddon 2011, p. 266.
    6. 1 2 Tindale 1974, p. 175.
    7. 1 2 Hale & Tindale 1933, p. 70.

    Sources

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