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Martu Erotic

Homeland

Great Sandy, Little Sandy and Gibson deserts of Western Australia, around Karlamilyi (Rudall River), Lake Disappointment and the Percival Lakes; communities include Jigalong, Punmu, Parnngurr, Kunawarritji and Newman

Language

Martu Wangka and related Western Desert dialects including Manyjilyjarra, Kartujarra and Putijarra (Pama-Nyungan, Wati branch); English

Religion

Jukurrpa (Dreaming) law and ceremony, alongside Christianity introduced through the Jigalong mission

Subgroups

Manyjilyjarra, Kartujarra, Kiyajarra, Putijarra, Warnman and neighboring dialect groups; part of the wider Western Desert cultural bloc

Region

Australia / New Zealand

About Martu People

Martu is a word from the desert itself. In the language of the people who use it, it simply means a person, one of us. Over the twentieth century it became the shared name for families from several neighboring dialect groups, among them Manyjilyjarra, Kartujarra, Kiyajarra, Putijarra and Warnman. Their country covers parts of the Great Sandy, Little Sandy and Gibson deserts of Western Australia, around Lake Disappointment, the Percival Lakes and the Rudall River, now Karlamilyi National Park. They are held together by shared law, marriage between groups and a long history of moving between the same soaks, rockholes and hunting grounds.

Martu speak the Western Desert Language, a long chain of dialects that neighbors across the arid interior can largely understand. It belongs to the Pama-Nyungan family, which covers most of the continent. Martu Wangka took shape at Jigalong, where speakers of different dialects were thrown together, and it is still the language of home and community. English is kept for school, work and government.

Contact came late and hard. In 1906 Alfred Canning's survey party chained Aboriginal men and forced them to lead the way to water, and the stock route that followed cut straight through Martu country. Jigalong started as a depot on the rabbit-proof fence and later became a mission. In 1931 three girls were taken from there to the Moore River settlement near Perth. Molly and Daisy walked back along the fence all the way home, a story later told in a book and a film. Some families stayed out in the desert into the 1960s, until patrol officers cleared the flight path of rockets fired from Woomera. One couple, Warri and Yatungka, lived alone in the desert until they were found in 1977.

The move back onto country since the 1980s is the other half of the story. Families set up communities at Punmu, Parnngurr and Kunawarritji, Parnngurr partly as a stand against uranium exploration at nearby Kintyre. In 2002 the Federal Court recognized Martu native title over one of the largest areas in Australia. Law business and initiation still shape the year. The Jukurrpa, or Dreaming, lives alongside a Christianity picked up in the mission years without being replaced by it. Martu women still hunt sand goannas by burning small patches of spinifex, and ecologists now credit the practice with keeping the desert a patchwork of old and new growth. Martu ranger teams turn that knowledge into paid land work, and painters at Martumili Artists put the same country onto canvas.

Related ethnic groups

Groups that share Martu's homeland, region, language, or religious tradition — likely candidates for comparative phenotype reference.

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