No image yet

Wiradjuri Erotic

Homeland

Central New South Wales, Australia: the Macquarie, Lachlan and Murrumbidgee river country west of the Great Dividing Range, including Bathurst, Orange, Dubbo, Wagga Wagga and Albury

Language

Wiradjuri (Pama-Nyungan, Wiradhuric group, related to Gamilaraay and Ngiyampaa), now being revived; English

Religion

Largely Christian since the mission era, with traditional law and belief centered on the creator Baiame still honored by many

Subgroups

Koori (Aboriginal peoples of New South Wales and Victoria); related by language to the Gamilaraay and Ngiyampaa; historically many local clans along the three rivers

Region

Australia / New Zealand

About Wiradjuri People

The Wiradjuri are named for the way they speak. The usual explanation of the name joins wiray, the word for no, to a suffix meaning having: the people who say wiray. That suits a nation that has rebuilt much of its modern identity around its language. Wiradjuri country is the largest Aboriginal territory in New South Wales. It is a broad inland sweep running west from the Great Dividing Range across slopes and plains, held together by three rivers: the Macquarie, the Lachlan and the Murrumbidgee. Wiradjuri often call themselves the people of the three rivers, and Bathurst, Orange, Dubbo, Cowra, Wagga Wagga and Albury all stand on their land. Before colonization, life followed those rivers. Clans moved with the seasons, fishing for Murray cod, hunting kangaroo and emu, and gathering plant foods. People took bark from river red gums for canoes and shelters, and the scars still show on old trees. Possum-skin cloaks, stitched from dozens of pelts and cut with designs on the inside, carried people through frosty winters, and cloak-making has come back as a living craft. Wiradjuri also carved patterns into standing trees to mark burials and the grounds of the burbung. That was the initiation that brought boys into adult law, a law tied to the creator Baiame.

British settlement crossed the Blue Mountains in 1815 and reached Wiradjuri country almost at once. By 1824 the fighting around Bathurst had become open war. The resistance leader Windradyne led raids on settler stations, Governor Brisbane declared martial law, and soldiers and settlers killed Wiradjuri people in numbers never properly recorded. Sheep and cattle runs and then gold rushes followed, and after them missions and reserves such as Warangesda and Erambie. The Cootamundra home, which held Aboriginal girls taken from their families, also stood in Wiradjuri country. Most Wiradjuri today are Christian, a legacy of the mission years, but that faith often sits beside duties to kin, to country and to the stories tied to particular places. They are one of the largest Aboriginal nations in Australia, living in regional towns, on former reserves and in Sydney and Canberra. Reviving the language has been the defining work of recent decades. Elder Stan Grant Sr. spent years with linguist John Rudder building a Wiradjuri dictionary, and the language is now taught in schools and at university. One word has traveled furthest: yindyamarra, which means respect, gentleness and going slowly, and which many Wiradjuri treat as a guide to living well. Tennis champion Evonne Goolagong Cawley, politician Linda Burney and writer Anita Heiss are all Wiradjuri.

Related ethnic groups

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

no image

Arrernte