Garrwa people

The Garrwa people, also known as Garawa, are an Indigenous Australian people living in the Northern Territory whose traditional lands extended from east of the McArthur River at Borroloola to Doomadgee and the Nicholson River in Queensland.^[1][2]

Language

Together with the Waanyi language, Garrwa belongs to the Garrwan language family, and had two dialects: the heavy eastern Guninderri and the light western variety of Garrwa. Its status within the larger Pama-Nyungan family is disputed: though it shares some features, it also displays many innovative forms that are rare in other Australian languages, suggesting that it fits a distinctive typology.^[3]

Ecology

Maps have the Yanyuwa people to the north of the Garrwa, the Waanyi and Gudanji to their south, and the Ganggalida to their east. Today the Garrwa people consider themselves related to the area along the Gulf of Carpentaria coastline of Queensland, around the Wearyan River and Robinson River. Two other groups, the Binbinga and Wilangarra became extinct soon after the beginning of white colonisation.^[2] The Garrwa habitat extended from the northern tropical, with its mangroves to southern semi-arid inland, with its sandstone gorges. According to the seasons, they would venture into the Bukalara (Barkly Tableland). They see themselves as a freshwater people, distinct from the saltwater peoples to the north and east, harvesting the food-crayfish, turtles, tubers and waterlies- available of the riverine ecosystem together with land game like kangaroo, echidnas and possums.^[4]

Drawing on a paraphrase by the historian Tony Roberts, the leading modern authority on the Garrwa, Ilana Mushin, identifies as part of Garrwa lands the area described in the journal kept by Ludwig Leichhardt as he travelled an old aboriginal trade route through the southern coastal area, as that is . The area concerned, now called the Port McArthur Tidal Wetlands System lay around the Robinson and Wearyan rivers, and Leichhardt

described emu traps around waterholes, fish traps and fishing weirs across rivers, well-used footpaths, major living areas with substantial dwellings, wells of clear water and a sophisticated method of detoxifying the otherwise extremely poisonous cycad nuts. There were moderately high concentrations of people leading an industrious lifestyle. All of this was markedly different to the stereotyped images of 'savages' leading a 'nomadic' and 'primitive' existence.'^[5][6][7]

Notes and references

Notes

1. Trigger 2015, p. 56.
2. Mushin 2013, p. 1.
3. Mushin 2013, p. 5.
4. Mushin 2013, pp. 1-2.
5. Mushin 2013, p. 2.
6. Roberts 2005, p. 9.
7. Roberts 2009.

References

• Mushin, Ilana (2013). A Grammar of (Western) Garrwa. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-1-614-51241-7.
• Roberts, Tony (2005). Frontier Justice: A History of the Gulf Country to 1900. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 978-0-702-24083-6.
• Roberts, Tony (November 2009). "The brutal truth:What happened in the gulf country". The Monthly.
• Trigger, David (2015). "Change and Succession in Aboriginal Claims to Land". In Toner, P.G. Strings of Connectedness: Essays in honour of Ian Keen. Australian National University Press. pp. 53–73. ISBN 978-1-925-02263-6.