Wurla

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The Wurla, also written Ola, or Waladjangarri, are an indigenous Australian people of the Kimberley region of Western Australia

Kimberley (Western Australia) Region in Western Australia

The Kimberley is the northernmost of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy and Tanami Deserts in the region of Pilbara, and on the east by the Northern Territory.

Western Australia state in Australia

Western Australia is a state occupying the entire western third of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, and the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east. Western Australia is Australia's largest state, with a total land area of 2,529,875 square kilometres, and the second-largest country subdivision in the world, surpassed only by Russia's Sakha Republic. The state has about 2.6 million inhabitants – around 11 percent of the national total – of whom the vast majority live in the south-west corner, 79 per cent of the population living in the Perth area, leaving the remainder of the state sparsely populated.

Contents

Name

Though often written Ola, Wurla is now considered the recommended transcription for this tribal ethnonym. [1]

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

Country

Norman Tindale estimated their tribal grounds as extending over abourt 7,800 square miles (20,000 km2). The Wurlu occupied the northern side of the King Leopold Range. They lay east of the Isdell Range, and their reach extended northwards as far as the Phillips Range and the headwaters of the Hann and upper Fitzroy rivers. To the east, their territory ran up to Bluff Face Range, in a line that linked directly Elgee Cliffs and the Burramundy Range. [2] According to information gathered by Joseph Birdsell, the Wurla in penetrated down the Chapman and Durack rivers to Karunjie severed the traditional links between the Ngarinjin and Gija. [3]

Norman Tindale Australian biologist

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

King Leopold Ranges locality in Western Australia

The King Leopold Ranges are a range of hills in the western Kimberley region of Western Australia. The range was named on 6 June 1879 by the explorer Alexander Forrest, during an expedition in the Kimberley area, after King Leopold II of Belgium, "for the great interest taken by His Majesty in exploration".

Isdell River is a river in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, named in 1898 by explorer Frank Hann after James Isdell, who was prominent in the region and later served as a member of parliament.

Social organisation

The Wurla were divided into clans.

A band society, sometimes called a camp or, in older usage, a horde, is the simplest form of human society. A band generally consists of a small kin group, no larger than an extended family or clan. The general consensus of modern anthropology sees the average number of members of a social band at the simplest level of foraging societies with generally a maximum size of 30 to 50 people.

Ellenbrae

Ellenbrae, also commonly referred to as Ellenbrae Station, is a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station in Western Australia.

Alternative names

The Ngarinjin or Ngarinyin, also known as the Ungarinyin, are an indigenous Australian people of northern Western Australia.

Gija, also spelt Gidja and Kija, alternatively known as the Lungga, refers to Aboriginal Australians from the East Kimberley area of Western Australia, about 200 km south of Kununurra. In the late 19th century pastoralists were fiercely resisted by Gija people, many of whom now live around localities such as Halls Creek and Warmun.

The Ngarinyin language (Ungarinjin), or Eastern Worrorran, is a moribund Australian Aboriginal language of Western Australia. With less than one hundred living speakers, Ngarinyin is considered a critically endangered language, though there are efforts being made to documenting speech and grammar structures before it becomes extinct, including the specifics on the terms of the kinship system of the language.

Notes

    Citations

    1. ↑ McGregor 2013, p. 31.
    2. ↑ Tindale 1974, pp. 254–255.
    3. 1 2 3 Tindale 1974, p. 255.

    Sources

    Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

    The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) is an independent Australian Government statutory authority. It is a collecting, publishing and research institute and is considered to be Australia's premier resource for information about the cultures and societies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The Institute is a leader in ethical research and the handling of culturally sensitive material and holds in its collections many unique and irreplaceable items of cultural, historical and spiritual significance. The collection at AIATSIS has been built through over 50 years of research and engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and is now a source of language and culture revitalisation, native title research and family and community history. AIATSIS is located on Acton Peninsula in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.

    Routledge global publisher

    Routledge is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals, & online resources in the fields of humanities, behavioural science, education, law and social science. The company publishes approximately 1,800 journals and 5,000 new books each year and their backlist encompasses over 70,000 titles. Routledge is claimed to be the largest global academic publisher within humanities and social sciences.

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