Arrernte

Alice Springs stands on Mparntwe, in the country of the Arrernte, a group of closely related Aboriginal peoples whose lands spread across the MacDonnell Ranges of Central Australia. Long written as Aranda or Arunta, they have lived in this region for at least 30,000 years. Many still speak an Arrernte dialect, and in 2000 they became the first Aboriginal people in Australia to win recognition of native title over an urban area.

The name covers several related groups: Central Arrernte of Alice Springs and its surrounds, Eastern Arrernte to the east, and Western Arrarnta to the west, towards Hermannsburg and Kings Canyon. The anthropologist Norman Tindale estimated their lands at some 47,000 square miles, reaching from the MacDonnell and James Ranges down the Finke River and east into the sandhills of the Simpson Desert. Mparntwe, meaning "watering place", refers to a waterhole in the usually dry Todd River.

Arrernte spirituality centres on the landscape and on the Dreaming, which they call Altyerre. According to Arrernte traditional histories, the ranges around Alice Springs were shaped by ancestral caterpillar beings, among them the Ayepe-arenye and the Ntyarlke, together with other ancestral beings. From the late nineteenth century Arrernte ceremonial and religious life was documented closely by the anthropologists Baldwin Spencer and Francis Gillen, by the missionary Carl Strehlow and afterwards by his son T. G. H. Strehlow, with whom Arrernte men worked to document songs and ceremonies between 1932 and 1974. The Strehlow Research Centre in Alice Springs now holds much of this material.

Sustained colonisation came with the Overland Telegraph Line, completed in 1872, which placed a repeater station beside the waterhole that settlers named Alice Springs. In 1877 German Lutheran missionaries founded Hermannsburg at Ntaria, a sacred site on the Finke River, in Western Arrarnta country. They learned the language, and the mission published a 1,750-word dictionary in 1890 and a book of Christian worship in Arrernte in 1891. Conflict grew with pastoral expansion, especially during droughts, when hungry people hunted cattle, and the missionaries reported abuses and killings involving the native police. Severe droughts also brought hunger to the mission; during the drought of 1927, 85 per cent of Aboriginal children there died. In 1913 Baldwin Spencer, by then Chief Protector of Aborigines, proposed removing Aboriginal children from their parents and placing them on reserves. Under later missionaries Hermannsburg also became home to a school of watercolour landscape painters.

In 1982 the Hermannsburg mission lands were handed back to their traditional owners under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976. In May 2000 the Federal Court recognised the Arrernte as the native title holders of Alice Springs, with non-exclusive rights, the first successful native title claim over an Australian town; the Lhere Artepe Aboriginal Corporation holds the title. The Arrernte Council represents the Arrernte Lands within the Central Land Council.

The Arrernte dialects belong to the Arandic group. Eastern and Central Arrernte is the strongest: the 2016 census counted 1,910 speakers, while other estimates run to about 4,100. It is taught in schools around Alice Springs and at Batchelor Institute and Charles Darwin University, and is heard in local media and government. Western Arrarnta had about 440 speakers in 2016, some other dialects are threatened, and projects are under way to revive Southern Arrernte, or Pertame. Arrernte people also use an elaborate sign language.

Our maps from 1600 to 1815 draw an approximate Arrernte territory around the MacDonnell Ranges and the upper Finke River. Neighbours include the Warlpiri to the north-west, the Anmatyerre and Alyawarre to the north, and the Luritja to the west, with the Pitjantjatjara beyond.