Barngarla

Much of South Australia's Eyre Peninsula, from Port Lincoln north to Whyalla and Port Augusta, is Barngarla country; older records spell the name Parnkalla or Pangkala. Shown on our maps as the Banggarla, in recent years they have revived their language and won a series of land rights cases.

Norman Tindale put Barngarla lands at about 17,500 square miles (roughly 45,300 square kilometres), from the eastern side of Lake Torrens and the Gawler Ranges south to Kimba, Cleve and Franklin Harbour. There were two main divisions: a northern group ranging around Port Augusta and towards Quorn and Beltana, and a southern group along the western shore of Spencer Gulf. People lived mostly on the coast, moving inland by season and for ceremony. They wore kangaroo-skin cloaks and lived chiefly on seafood, alongside kangaroo, emu and reptiles; pigface and nondo beans were prized foods. In the ritual known as "singing to the sharks", men sang from the clifftops while women danced on the beach, calling on sharks and dolphins to drive fish into the shallows.

Barngarla belief centres on the Seven Sisters story. Several Eyre Peninsula place names, among them Uley and Yeelanna, are said to derive from Yulanya, the main male figure in that narrative.

Shortly before Europeans arrived, the Kokatha were pushing south and forcing the Barngarla back from their northern margins. After Port Lincoln was founded in 1839, the Barngarla and Nauo fought settlers more than any other people in the colony; raids on pastoral stations were met with vigilante killings and indiscriminate police reprisals, in a conflict, one strand of the Australian frontier wars, that went on until at least 1862. Barngarla oral history also preserves the 1849 events at Waterloo Bay, where later accounts claimed up to 260 Aboriginal people died; official records show far fewer, and historians still debate the scale.

In 1850 a Barngarla school and an Anglican mission opened at Poonindie, where conditions were poor. When it closed in 1894 most residents were moved to other missions. The Aborigines Act of 1911 and the removals of the Stolen Generations further broke the passing on of language.

The last fluent speaker is reported to have died in 1964. In 2012 the linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann of the University of Adelaide began reclamation workshops with the community in three towns, using the vocabulary recorded by the missionary Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann in 1844. A dictionary app with more than 3,000 words followed in 2016. Barngarla grammar is notable for four numbers, including a "superplural" meaning "heaps of".

On 22 January 2015 the Federal Court recognised Barngarla native title over most of the roughly 44,500 square kilometres claimed, roughly two-thirds of the peninsula. On 24 September 2021 the court added native title over Port Augusta itself, ending a 25-year battle. In 2020 the federal government chose a farm near Kimba, on Barngarla land, for a national radioactive waste facility; in 2023 the Barngarla won a Federal Court case against it and the project was cancelled.

Our maps draw approximate Banggarla territory in 1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783 and 1800, between the Nauo and Wirangu to the west and the peoples of the Flinders Ranges to the east. See also Australia.