Arabana people

West of Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, in the arid north of South Australia, lies the country of the Arabana, whose traditional lands take in Oodnadatta, the Neales River and Lake Cadibarrawirracanna. In 2012 a Federal Court determination recognised their native title over more than 68,000 square kilometres, including Lake Eyre itself.

The older form of the name was Ngarabana: Arabana speakers gradually dropped an initial ng sound from words, a change still going on in the 20th century, so that the word for "yes" recorded as ngarayi in the 19th century was said arayi by 1994. Arabana belongs to the Karnic group of Pama–Nyungan languages and shares about 90 per cent of its vocabulary with Wangkangurru, which speakers nonetheless regard as a separate language. It had several dialects, of which Wangkakupa, the "little language" of Anna Creek, is the best preserved. The language is now in steep decline: one survey in 2004 estimated 250 speakers, while the 2006 census recorded only 21.

Norman Tindale estimated Arabana lands at about 19,500 square miles, from the Neales River west to the Stuart Range and from Macumba Creek south to Coward Springs, including Oodnadatta and Lora Creek. The edge of the western tableland near Coober Pedy marked their boundary with the Kokatha, and the Wangkangurru lived to the east.

As among their Lake Eyre basin neighbours, Arabana society was divided into two matrilineal moieties, Mathari and Kararru, each with totemic divisions called mardu, and marriage within one's own moiety was forbidden. As the population fell, most of the totemic divisions died out, and from the 1940s the marriage rule weakened, until by the 1990s many young people did not know their moiety. Well-documented stories feature a man-eating buzzard and a friendly wedge-tailed eagle.

Arabana country lay on the line of colonial development: the Overland Telegraph, completed in 1872, and the railway from Adelaide to Oodnadatta, opened in 1891, both crossed it, along with the pastoral runs that came with them. In August 1903 the anthropologists Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis Gillen spent ten days interviewing Arabana people near Old Peake Station. They came to answer a challenge from the Scottish writer Andrew Lang, who had argued against their view that the Arrernte represented the most "primitive" form of society, proposing the matrilineal Arabana instead.

An Arabana elder lodged a native title claim on behalf of his people on 16 January 1998. The 2012 determination in Dodd v South Australia recognised Arabana title over land covering Anna Creek Station and several other pastoral leases, Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre National Park and the towns of Marree, William Creek and Oodnadatta, finding that the Arabana had kept strong connections to their country and culture. The Arabana Corporation holds the title. In October 2025 the owners of Anna Creek Station faced allegations that, from 2017 to 2025, they had dammed creeks and waterholes on the station without permission, contrary to Aboriginal heritage and natural resources law. Today most Arabana live off their country, in Adelaide, Port Augusta, Marree, Coober Pedy, Oodnadatta, Alice Springs and Darwin.

Our maps for 1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783 and 1800 draw an approximate Arabana territory west of Lake Eyre, beside the Kokatha, the Antakirinja, the Wangkangurru and the Dieri. See also Aboriginal Australians and Australia.