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The Ngunnawal people, also spelt Ngunawal, are an Aboriginal people of southern New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory in Australia.
Ngunnawal and Gundungurra are Australian Aboriginal languages from the Pama-Nyungan family, the traditional languages of the Ngunnawal and Gandangara peoples respectively. The two varieties are very closely related, being considered dialects of the one (unnamed) language, in the technical, linguistic sense of those terms. [1] [ incomplete short citation ] One classification of these varieties groups them with Ngarigo, as one of several southern tableland languages of New South Wales. [2]
When first encountered by European colonisers in the 1820s, the Ngunawal-speaking Indigenous people lived around this area.
Their tribal country according to the early ethnographer, R. H. Mathews, stated their country extended from Goulburn to Yass and Boorowa southwards as far as Lake George to the east and Goodradigbee to the west. [3] To the south of Lake George was the county of the Nyamudy speaking a Ngarigo dialect. Recent research by Harold Koch (2011) and others shows that the Ngunnawal country was primarily the land surrounding the Yass River extending between Lake George to the east and the Murrumbidgee to the west, while the southern boundary of the Ngunnawal people was north of Canberra, approximately on a line from Gundaroo to Wee Jasper. Sometimes the whole of the Burragorang language speaking area as far north as near Young is included as Ngunnawal, giving them a population in the 1830s of well over a thousand people.
A major battle for ownership of the country was fought at Sutton between an invading Ngunnawal band and the Nyamudy inhabitants, which the former won, establishing the Ngunnawal country, which did not extend further south along the Yass River than Gundaroo.[ citation needed ]
The Ngunawal people were northern neighbours of the Nyamudy/Namadgi people who lived to the south on the Limestone Plains. The Wiradjuri (to the west) and Gundungurra (to the north) peoples also bordered the Ngunnawal.[ citation needed ]
At present,[ when? ] three groups contest ownership in the Canberra area: the Ngambri, the Ngarigo, and the Walgalu speaking Ngambri-Guumaal, represented by Shane Mortimer, with widespread connections from across the Snowy Mountains up to the Blue Mountains.[ citation needed ]
According to settlers living in the area in the 1830s, such as quoted in the Queanbeyan Age , there were three groups in the region: the Ngunnawal, the Nyamudy/Namadgi and the Ngarigo.[ citation needed ]
The present dispute originated when the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory at the time, Jon Stanhope, inaccurately stated that "Ngambri is the name of one of a number of family groups that make up the Ngunnawal nation." He went on to say that "the Government recognises members of the Ngunnawal nation as descendants of the original inhabitants of this region." He made the error after talking with multiracial people of part Ngunnawal descent whose forebears had come from Yass in the 1920s to find work.[ citation needed ]
In 2012 research for the ACT Government, "Our Kin, Our Country", found "there is no basis within the description of the country supplied by Tindale. The research confirmed that the language spoken in the Canberra region was a dialect of Ngarigu, 'related to but distinguishable from the dialects spoken at Tumut and Monaro'". The report stated that evidence gathered from the mid-1700s onward was too scant to support any family's claims to be original owners. [4]
Some Canberra-area Aboriginal people in inland southeast Australia, including Matilda House, identify as Ngambri. Shane Mortimer defines himself as one of the Ngambri-Guumwaal, Guumwaal being a language name said to mean "high country". [5] This claim to be a distinct nation is disputed by many other local Aboriginal people who say that the Ngambri are a small family who took their name from the Sullivan's Creek area located to the east of Black Mountain in the late 1990s. [6]
The earliest direct evidence for Aboriginal occupation in the area comes from a rock shelter near the area of Birrigai near Tharwa, which has been dated to approximately 25,000 years ago. However, it is likely (based on older sites known from the surrounding regions) that human occupation of the region goes back considerably further.[ citation needed ]
They were gradually displaced from the Yass area beginning in the 1820s when graziers began to occupy the land there. Some people worked at properties in the region. In 1826 many Aboriginal people at Lake George protested an incident involving a shepherd and an Aboriginal woman, though the protesters moved away peacefully. [7]
Historical records of Australia record the last "full-blooded" Ngunnawal person, Nellie Hamilton, dying in 1897, however, this is disputed by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, as there are many Ngunnawal people still around today. [8]
Legal status of native title not current.
George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines in Victoria, who toured through the Yass area in 1844 and stayed with Hamilton Hume, commented "The Yass and Bathurst Blacks in the early settling of the Colony were said to have been troublesome, and that in consequence Commandoes had gone out against them", White and Cane repeat this. They also mention "one of these encounters involved the colonial government sending a detachment of soldiers in 1826 to disperse a large and hostile gathering of Ngunnawal Aborigines at Lake George". My friend, Dr Ann Jackson-Nakano, who has made a close study of the Lake George communities gives a detailed background to this hostility. "Communities banded together in large numbers to avenge the taking of their women by European stockmen at Lake George and Lake Bathurst. It incensed these groups enough when their Indigenous neighbours stole wives, as Govett and others described it, but they would not tolerate their women being taken by Europeans." (p 25; Weereewa History Series Volume 1).
Namadgi National Park is a protected area in the south-west of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), bordering Kosciuszko National Park in New South Wales. It lies approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) southwest of Canberra, and occupies approximately 46 percent of the ACT's land area.
Lake George is an endorheic lake in south-eastern New South Wales, Australia. It is approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) north-east of Canberra located adjacent to the Federal Highway en route to Goulburn and Sydney. Lake George is also the name of a locality on the western and southern edges of the lake, within the area of the Queanbeyan–Palerang Regional Council.
The history of Canberra details the development of the city of Canberra from the time before European settlement to the city's planning by the Chicago architect Walter Burley Griffin in collaboration with Marion Mahony Griffin, and its subsequent development to the present day.
Gunning is a small town on the Old Hume Highway, between Goulburn and Yass in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia, about 260 km south-west of Sydney and 75 km north of the national capital, Canberra. Nearby towns and cities are Cullerin, Gundaroo, Dalton, Yass, Murrumbateman and Goulburn.
Dalton is a small inland country town in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia, in Upper Lachlan Shire. The population was 230 in the 2021 census.
Ngunnawal/Ngunawal and Gundungurra are Australian Aboriginal languages, and the traditional languages of the Ngunnawal and Gandangarra. Ngunnawal and Gundungurra are very closely related and the two were most likely highly mutually intelligible. As such they can be considered dialects of a single unnamed language, but this is the technical linguistic usage of these terms and Ngunnawal and Gundungurra peoples prefer to describe their individual varieties as separate languages in their own right.
The history of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) as a separate administrative division began in 1911, when it was transferred from New South Wales to the Australian federal government. The territory contains Australia's capital city Canberra and various smaller settlements. Until 1989, it also administered the Jervis Bay Territory, a small coastal region.
Gundaroo is a small village in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia and in Yass Valley Council. It is situated to the east of the Yass River, about 16 kilometres (10 mi) north of Sutton, about 15 kilometres (9 mi) west of the Lake George range. At the 2016 census, Gundaroo "state suburb" had a population of 1,146. At the 2006 census, its "urban centre/locality" had a population of 331.
The Gandangara people, also spelt Gundungara, Gandangarra, Gundungurra and other variations, are an Aboriginal Australian people in south-eastern New South Wales, Australia. Their traditional lands include present day Goulburn, Wollondilly Shire, The Blue Mountains and the Southern Highlands.
The Walgalu are an Aboriginal people of highland southeast New South Wales, Australia. The Ngambri may belong to the Walgalu grouping, but are often treated separately.
The Ngambri, also known as Kamberri, are an Aboriginal clan or group who claim traditional ownership of the Australian Capital Territory area, but their connection to the land is contested. One reason for this is that Canberra, where Ngambri claims are made, lay close to the tribal boundaries that separated the Ngarigo from the Ngunnawal people. Other reasons are the dislocation of Aboriginal populations and intertribal marriage and interracial relationships following European settlement, leading to a high proportion of people identifying themselves as Indigenous Australians, but not knowing their traditional origins. As of April 2023 the ACT Government does not recognise Ngambri people as traditional owners of the ACT, listing only the Ngunnawal people as traditional custodians of the land, but has promised a review of their Indigenous protocol following a Supreme Court challenge by Ngambri families in July 2022.
Jerrabomberra Creek, a partly perennial stream of the Murrumbidgee catchment within the Murray–Darling basin, is located in the Capital Country region spanning both New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
The Yuin–Kuric languages are a group of mainly extinct Australian Aboriginal languages traditionally spoken in the south east of Australia. They belong in the Pama–Nyungan family. These languages are divided into the Yuin, Kuri, and Yora groups, although exact classifications vary between researchers. Yuin–Kuric languages were spoken by the original inhabitants of what are now the cities of Sydney and Canberra.
The Wandandian are an Aboriginal Australian people of the South Coast of New South Wales with connections to the Yuin and Tharawal nations.
Matilda Williams House was born in 1945 on the Erambie Aboriginal Reserve at Cowra, New South Wales (NSW), and raised in her grandfather’s house at Hollywood Aboriginal Reserve in Yass, NSW. When she was 12, House spent a year in Parramatta Girls' Home. House was one of ten children.
Wanggamala, also spelt Wanggamanha, Wangkamahdla, Wangkamadla, Wangkamanha, Wangkamana, Wonkamala, Wongkamala, Wonkamudla, and other variants, is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language of the Pama–Nyungan family, previously spoken in the Northern Territory around Hay River and to the south of the Andegerebinha-speaking area.
The Ngarigo people are Aboriginal Australian people of southeast New South Wales, whose traditional lands also extend around the present border with Victoria. They are named for their language, Ngarigo, which in the 19th century was said to be spoken by the Nyamudy people.
The Djilamatang were thought to be a distinct Indigenous Australian people of the state of Victoria, Australia. This has recently been questioned by Ian Clark.
The Jaitmatang, also spelled Yaithmathang, are an Indigenous Australian people of the State of Victoria.
The Wanjiwalku were an indigenous Australian people of the state of New South Wales.