Alyawarre

North-east of Alice Springs, along the Sandover and Bundey rivers, is the country of the Alyawarre, also spelt Alyawarr and formerly recorded as Iliaura. They are an Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory, numbering roughly 1,200, whose language remains in strong everyday use and whose homeland at Utopia has produced some of the most celebrated painters in Australian art.

Alyawarr is one of the Arandic dialects of the Upper Arrernte group, related to the speech of the Arrernte; the neighbouring Kaytetye language is a close relative but is counted as separate. It is the second-largest dialect in the group, with about 1,550 speakers in 2016, and is used not only around the Sandover but also towards Tennant Creek and into Queensland. A dictionary appeared in 1993 and a picture dictionary in 2004. At Utopia in 2016 only 4 per cent of households spoke English alone at home.

Norman Tindale put Alyawarre lands at about 17,800 square miles, taking in the Sandover and Bundey rivers, Ooratippra and Fraser creeks, the northern flank of the Harts Range, the Jervois Range and the Elkedra River. Society was organised in four named sections that governed marriage. Local traditions such as awelye painting remain actively practised.

The Overland Telegraph, finished in 1872, opened the region to Europeans. Conflict around the Barrow Creek telegraph station was followed by reprisal raids that took many lives among the Alyawarre and their Kaytetye, Warumungu, Anmatyerre and Warlpiri neighbours. Displaced Alyawarre fled in large numbers east across Wakaya country to stations on the Barkly Tableland and later to Lake Nash; in the early 1900s others escaped violence at the Hatches Creek wolfram field. Cattle leases took the better-watered land, cutting people off from sacred sites and hunting grounds, and many Alyawarre worked on stations as stockmen, drovers, fencers and domestic servants. In 1969 one researcher counted 500 to 600 Alyawarre, living mainly at Lake Nash, on the Georgina River, at MacDonald Downs, on the Bundey River and at the Warrabri reserve.

Utopia, partly on Alyawarre and partly on Anmatyerre land, is a homeland area formed in 1978 rather than a former mission or government settlement. The Central Land Council lodged a claim on 20 November 1978, and the old Utopia pastoral lease was returned as Aboriginal freehold in 1979–1980; four of the five owning clans are Alyawarre. A separate claim with the Wakaya for land around the Purrukwarra outstation ended on 22 October 1992 with the return of 2,065 square kilometres to the Alyawarre and 1,874 to the Wakaya, small parts of what had been claimed. People at Utopia live in some 16 outstations rather than a town; the largest community, Ampilatwatja, grew from a plot granted in 1976. Utopia's artists include Emily Kame Kngwarreye and the Petyarre sisters.

Our maps from 1600 to 1815 (1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783, 1800 and 1815) draw an approximate Alyawarre territory north-east of Alice Springs, beside the Kaytetye (labelled Kaytej), the Anmatyerre, the Wakaya and the Arrernte. See also Aboriginal Australians and Australia.