The Antakirinja, also spelled Antikirinya or Antakarinya and sometimes called Ngonde, are an Aboriginal people of the far north of South Australia. Their country lies on the eastern edge of the Western Desert, between the Everard Ranges and the stony gibber plains around Coober Pedy. Many people who once identified as Antakirinja now identify as Yankunytjatjara.
Name and language
The name is generally thought to come from the neighbouring Arandic languages, with a meaning along the lines of "people from the west" or "from the south"; the anthropologist Norman Tindale favoured "westerners", while later linguists derive it from Lower Arrernte words for a direction and "originating from". Their speech is a variety of the Western Desert language, part of the Pama–Nyungan family, a vast chain of closely related dialects whose speakers can understand one another from Western Australia to the Northern Territory. It is close to Yankunytjatjara, which is spoken today in Mimili, Indulkana and Fregon and eastward to Oodnadatta and Coober Pedy.
Country
Tindale estimated their lands at about 24,500 square miles. They took in the upper reaches of the Hamilton, Alberga, Wintinna and Lora rivers and ran north over today's border to Kulgera, inside the Northern Territory. To the south they reached Mount Willoughby, Arckaringa and the Stuart Range, near the Kokatha country at Coober Pedy, and their boundary with the Matuntara roughly followed the northern edge of the bluebush plains. Local groups included the Walarangunja of the eastern Everard Ranges and the Kadjilaranda further north. Nineteenth-century accounts of a four-section marriage system, collected by a telegraph stationmaster at Charlotte Waters, were judged by Tindale to describe the Arrernte instead.
Recording their own history
In 2012 the Antakirinja man Ingkama Bobby Brown and the linguist Petter Naessan published Irrititja, The Past, an Antakirinja history from Ingomar Station and beyond.
On our maps
Our maps from 1600 to 1815 draw an approximate Antakirinja territory, labelled Antakarinja, in northern South Australia. It sits among the lands of the Yankunytjatjara, the Luritja, the Arrernte, the Kokatha and the Arabana, one small part of the patchwork of Aboriginal Australian nations drawn on these maps.
From the atlas
Antakirinja on our maps
Borders of Time draws Antakirinja on 7 of its 54 world maps, from 1600 CE to 1815 CE. Its largest extent is on the 1600 CE map, covering about 55,400 km² (21,400 sq mi), roughly the size of Ireland today.
On that map it borders Arabana, Arrernte, Kokatha, Luritja and Yankuntjatjara.
On the map before it appears (1530 CE), the same area belongs to the Australian aboriginal hunter-gatherers. On the map after its last appearance (1878 CE), it belongs to South Australia (UK).
- 1600 CE55,400 km²
- 1650 CE55,400 km²
- 1700 CE55,400 km²
- 1715 CE55,400 km²
- 1783 CE55,400 km²
- 1800 CE55,400 km²
- 1815 CE41,400 km²
Measured from the historical-basemaps snapshots this atlas uses. Borders in those maps are approximate, especially for early periods.
Quick answers
- When did Antakirinja exist?
- It appears on the atlas’s maps from 1600 to 1815.
- Where was Antakirinja?
- At its largest, on the 1600 map, its land lies in today’s Australia (100%). On that map it borders Arabana, Arrernte, Kokatha and Luritja, among others.
- How big was Antakirinja?
- Antakirinja was largest on the 1600 map, at about 55,400 km² (21,400 sq mi).