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Warumungu Erotic

Homeland

Barkly region of the Northern Territory, Australia, centered on Tennant Creek (Jurnkkurakurr) and reaching south toward Karlu Karlu

Language

Warumungu (Pama-Nyungan); Wumpurrarni English and English widely spoken

Religion

Dreaming law and ceremony, alongside Christianity

Subgroups

Aboriginal Australian people of the North Central Desert, with close kin and ceremonial ties to Warlpiri, Warlmanpa, Kaytetye and Alyawarr neighbors

Region

Australia / New Zealand

About Warumungu People

Ask in Tennant Creek whose country the town stands on and the answer is Warumungu. Their own name for the place is Jurnkkurakurr, and through the telegraph line, the gold rush and the highway, the Warumungu never stopped treating it as theirs. They are a desert people of the Barkly region of the Northern Territory, with country running out from the low ranges and soakages around town, and ceremonial ties reaching south to the granite boulders of Karlu Karlu.

Their language, also called Warumungu, belongs to the Pama-Nyungan family that spans most of the continent, though it sits somewhat apart within it. It also lies near one of Australia's sharpest language borders: Jingulu and Wambaya, spoken just to the north and northeast, belong to a different family altogether. Warlpiri, Warlmanpa, Kaytetye and Alyawarr speakers live to the west and south, and marriage, trade and ceremony have long crossed those lines. In town, people often talk in Wumpurrarni English, named for the Warumungu word for an Aboriginal person. Older speakers hold Warumungu most fully, and a local language center works to keep it in use.

Social life runs on two patrimoieties and eight skin names, which tell each person whom they may marry, whom they should avoid and what their duties are in ceremony. Behind that stands the Dreaming, the law laid down by ancestral beings as they shaped the land. The best known of these outside the community is the Wollunqua, a giant serpent tied to a waterhole in Warumungu country. Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen watched its ceremonies in 1901, and their accounts later fed European theories about the origins of religion. Churches came with the settlements and are now part of local life too. Mourning has its own strict forms: bereaved women traditionally kept long periods of silence, and Warumungu women developed a sign language that could carry a full conversation through them.

The twentieth century was rough on them. After gold was found near Tennant Creek in the 1930s, officials moved Warumungu families away from the diggings, first to a settlement at Phillip Creek and then in the 1950s to Warrabri, now Ali Curung, on other people's country well to the south. Many walked back. When they lodged a claim to their land under the new land rights law, the Territory government fought it, and the case dragged on for well over a decade. Parts of the claimed land have since been handed back. The Nyinkka Nyunyu cultural center in town stands beside a sacred site of the spiky-tailed goanna, a plain statement that Tennant Creek is still Warumungu ground.

Related ethnic groups

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

Gurindji