Djaru

The Djaru, also written Jaru, are an Aboriginal people of the southern Kimberley in Western Australia, whose country runs from the Margaret River east towards Halls Creek and the Northern Territory border. Their language, for which Njining or Nyininy is an alternative name used especially around Flora Valley, is still spoken, though by a small and shrinking number of people, and the region they belong to is today often called the Kutjungka Region.

Norman Tindale estimated Djaru lands at about 13,000 square miles. They followed the Margaret River to its junction with the Mary, included the upper Christmas Creek and the Ord above the Dixon Range, and reached east past Cummins Range and Sturt Creek Station to the territory border, and north to the country around Halls Creek. Along Sturt Creek the land was shared "mix-up" country, used by neighbouring groups for its water and important sites. The Djaru were part of long trading networks: like the Gija, they prized the barbed composite spears made by peoples to the south from mulga hardwood, and traded for them with stone knives, finely flaked spear blades and pearl shell that passed inland from the distant coast.

Djaru belongs to the Ngumpin branch of the Pama–Nyungan family and is closely related to Walmajarri, with recorded dialects including Wawarl. Like many Aboriginal languages it has no grammatical gender, distinguishes single, dual and plural pronouns, and includes a set of hand signs for common animals, objects and actions, used especially while hunting; direction can even be shown by pointing with the lips. The 2016 census counted 217 speakers. Linguists note the language is under pressure from population loss, a growing reliance on English, and past government policies against Aboriginal languages.

From the late nineteenth century the region was opened to gold mining and cattle stations, and massacres of Aboriginal people followed; one estimate holds that the Djaru population fell by as much as half. Djaru oral tradition recalls a massacre at a place now called Hangman's Creek, linked with the police sergeant Richard Henry Pilmer, though it is absent from colonial records and historians question whether its timing fits his years of service. After two settlers were killed at Billiluna homestead in 1922, police went out on a punitive expedition, and Aboriginal testimony describes killings on the Canning Stock Route and then at Chuall Pool on Sturt Creek Station, where Djaru and Walmajarri people died. A Flinders University archaeological study published in 2016 found burnt bone fragments consistent with deliberate burning at the sites identified by the custodians, and concluded that police had likely massacred an unknown number of people there.

Our maps from 1600 to 1815 draw an approximate Djaru territory, labelled Jaru, in the southern Kimberley of Australia. Its neighbours include the Walmajarri, the Gija, the Kukatja, the Gurindji and the Warlpiri, among the Aboriginal Australian nations of the region.