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Ngaanyatjarra Erotic

Homeland

Ngaanyatjarra Lands in the Gibson and Great Victoria deserts, far eastern Western Australia near the Northern Territory and South Australia borders; communities include Warburton, Warakurna, Blackstone and Wingellina

Language

Ngaanyatjarra and closely related Ngaatjatjarra (Western Desert language, Pama-Nyungan); English widely spoken as a second language

Religion

Christianity, largely from the Warburton mission era, practiced alongside Tjukurrpa (Dreaming) law and ceremony

Subgroups

Western Desert peoples; closely tied to Ngaatjatjarra speakers and neighbors of the Pitjantjatjara, Pintupi and Martu

Region

Australia / New Zealand

About Ngaanyatjarra People

The name tells you who they are. Western Desert peoples often name themselves by the everyday words they use, and Ngaanyatjarra means roughly "having ngaanya," their word for "this." Speakers of the closely related Ngaatjatjarra dialect say ngaatja instead, and the Pitjantjatjara to the east are named the same way, after a verb form of their own. The differences are small, most of the speech is mutually intelligible, and families are linked across these lines by marriage, ceremony and shared country. Among themselves, people use a plainer word: Yarnangu, meaning people.

Their country covers a wide stretch of the Gibson and Great Victoria deserts in the far east of Western Australia, where the state meets the Northern Territory and South Australia. It is spinifex plain, red sand dunes and old worn ranges around Warburton, Blackstone and Wingellina. Knowing where to find rockholes, soaks and seasonal foods let families live here for thousands of years, and some groups were still living on the land with little contact with outsiders into the 1960s.

When contact came, it came late and quickly. The United Aborigines Mission opened at Warburton in 1934. In 1956 the Giles weather station was built to support rocket testing from Woomera, and it brought roads and patrol officers into the middle of the lands. In the same decade a parliamentary inquiry into hunger and sickness around Warburton caused a national stir. From the 1970s, families left the mission to start their own communities closer to their home country. The Ngaanyatjarra Council, formed in 1981, is still the main body running services across the lands, and native title was formally recognized in 2005.

Christianity took real root, and church singing in Ngaanyatjarra is part of community life. It sits alongside Tjukurrpa, the Dreaming law that binds people to particular sites, songlines and duties. Men's and women's ceremonies go on, the Seven Sisters story crosses the region, and kinship still shapes whom a person may marry, whom they must avoid, and who looks after which places. Women and girls still tell stories by drawing in the sand with a length of wire. The art scene is strong: Warburton is known for work in glass, Warakurna painters have painted their own history of contact, and sculptures woven from desert grasses end up in galleries far from the dunes.

Related ethnic groups

Groups that share Ngaanyatjarra's homeland, region, language, or religious tradition. These are likely candidates for comparative phenotype reference.

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