Madngella

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The Madngella, otherwise known as the Matngala [1] or Hermit Hill tribe, [2] [3] are an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory, Australia.

Northern Territory federal territory of Australia

The Northern Territory is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. It shares borders with Western Australia to the west, South Australia to the south, and Queensland to the east. To the north, the territory looks out to the Timor Sea, the Arafura Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria, including Western New Guinea and other Indonesian islands. The NT covers 1,349,129 square kilometres (520,902 sq mi), making it the third-largest Australian federal division, and the 11th-largest country subdivision in the world. It is sparsely populated, with a population of only 246,700, making it the least-populous of Australia's eight states and major territories, with fewer than half as many people as Tasmania.

Contents

Language

The Madngella spoke Matngele, one of the Eastern Daly languages, [4] now extinct.

Eastern Daly languages

The Eastern Daly languages are an extinct family of Australian aboriginal languages that are fairly closely related, at 50% cognate. They were:

Country

The Madngella lived traditionally in the middle and lower reaches of the Daly River nearby to the Mulluk-Mulluk people. [5] Norman Tindale assigned to them some 100 square miles (260 km2) of tribal land around Hermit Hill, and the area west of the Daly River, placing them to the southeast of the Yunggor people. [6] The Pongaponga lay to their north. [2]

Daly River, Northern Territory Town in the Northern Territory, Australia

Daly River is the name of a river and a town in the Northern Territory of Australia. At the 2006 census, Daly River had a population of 468. The town is part of the Victoria Daly Region local government area. Settlement on the river is centred on the Aboriginal community of Nauiyu, originally the site of a Catholic mission, as well as the town of Daly River itself, at the river crossing a few kilometres to the south. The area is popular for recreational fishing, being regarded as one of the best places to catch Barramundi in Australia. The Daly River is part of the Daly Catchment that flows from northern Northern Territory to central Northern Territory.

The Mulluk-Mulluk, otherwise known as the Malak-Malak, are an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory, Australia.

The Yunggor were an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory

Social system

In the merbok system of ceremonial exchange, the Madngella used the words in a way that indicated the coastal provenance of the articles (ninymer) exchanged, north-easterly and south-westerly.Medrdokfrom the former direction was calledpork [lower-alpha 1] padaka, as opposed to the south-westerly merbok, callednim berinken,whereberinken is a generic term used of tribe(s) living south-west of the Madngella. [7]

The Marrithiyal, also written Marithiel, are an indigenous Australian people whose traditional territory lay 30 to 50 miles south of the Daly River in the Northern Territory. They were sometimes known derogatively as Berringen(Berinken/Brinken), a term used by the Mulluk-Mulluk to refer to 'aliens'/strangers'.

Circumcision

A technique used in native medicine by the Madngella to heal infections to the penis after ritual circumcision had been performed was described by the Norwegian ethnographer Knut Dahl. [8]

History

The Madngella tribe had experienced intense culture shock in the wake of white settlement, whose effects over 50 years, according to who studied them in the early 1930s, had been to disintegrate many of their attachments to the traditional way of life. [5]

Culture shock

Culture shock is an experience a person may have when one moves to a cultural environment which is different from one's own; it is also the personal disorientation a person may feel when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration or a visit to a new country, a move between social environments, or simply transition to another type of life. One of the most common causes of culture shock involves individuals in a foreign environment. Culture shock can be described as consisting of at least one of four distinct phases: honeymoon, negotiation, adjustment, and adaptation.

Jesuit missionaries, after several endeavours to set up a station in the general area of the Daly River, eventually managed to establish a viable community at Hermit Hill. [9]

Alternative names

Notes

  1. ↑ porkwas a variety of hooked spear which the Madngella obtained by cultural diffusion from the north-east

Citations

  1. ↑ Green 1989, p. xiv, map.
  2. 1 2 MacKillop 1893, p. 254.
  3. ↑ Dahl 1926, p. 15.
  4. ↑ Dixon 2002, p. xli.
  5. 1 2 Stanner 1933, p. 156.
  6. 1 2 Tindale 1974, p. 230.
  7. ↑ Stanner 1933, p. 158.
  8. ↑ Dahl 1895, pp. 122–123.
  9. ↑ Dahl 1926, pp. 33–38.

Sources

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