Gamilaraay

The Gamilaraay, also written Gamilaroi, Gomeroi or Kamilaroi, are an Aboriginal Australian nation whose country runs from the upper Hunter Valley of New South Wales north-west across the plains into southern Queensland. They are one of the four biggest Aboriginal nations on the continent, and their language and culture are being actively revived today.

The name is built from gamil, the Gamilaraay word for "no", with a suffix meaning "having", so it marks the people as those who say gamil. Naming a group after its word for "no" is common in this part of Australia, and neighbouring dialects are named the same way. Dozens of spellings appear in colonial records; Kamilaroi is the form used on our maps.

The anthropologist Norman Tindale estimated Gamilaraay lands at around 75,000 square kilometres. They stretched from near Singleton to the Warrumbungle Mountains and north through the districts of today's Tamworth, Gunnedah, Narrabri, Moree, Walgett and Lightning Ridge to Mungindi, reaching just across the Queensland border.

The nation was formed of numerous family groups, each with its own tract of land. People hunted kangaroos, emus, possums, echidnas and birds, fished the rivers for fish, crayfish and mussels, and gathered yams, roots, larvae and eggs. Seeds were ground into flour for bread. Men usually hunted, while women cooked and gathered, and a person did not eat the animal that was their totem. The northern Gamilaraay met regularly with the neighbouring Bigambul for shared ceremonies at Boobera Lagoon, near present-day Goondiwindi.

Gamilaraay tradition tells of a creator ancestor who came down from the sky, shaped the rivers, mountains and forests, and gave people their laws, songs and the first initiation ground. Young men were initiated at bora ceremonies, held on specially prepared earthen rings that drew participants from several groups over a number of days. Some knowledge connected with these rites was restricted, and initiates learned a special vocabulary. Gamilaraay astronomy is also rich: the dark dust lanes of the Milky Way form an emu in the sky, and stories link Orion with the Pleiades.

In the 1830s pastoralists from the British colony of New South Wales, part of the British Empire, began moving onto Gamilaraay country, and competition for land and water led to violence on both sides. In late 1837 and January 1838, mounted police pursued Gamilaraay people after five stockmen were killed, and a series of clashes followed near Waterloo Creek, south-west of Moree. One account puts the Gamilaraay dead in the first encounter at four or five, others at forty to fifty, and the episode remains disputed. On 10 June 1838, at Myall Creek station, stockmen killed at least 28 unarmed Wirrayaraay people, a Gamilaraay group. Seven of the killers were convicted and hanged, one of the very few cases in which colonists were punished for such a massacre. A memorial opened at the site in 2000, and a ceremony is held there every year. Both episodes belong to the wider Australian frontier wars.

Gamilaraay belongs to the large Pama–Nyungan family. Its last fluent speakers died in the mid-twentieth century, but a wordlist from 1832, missionary studies from the 1850s and later recordings of the closely related Yuwaalaraay have allowed linguists and communities to reconstruct much of it. Census figures show speakers rising from 87 in 2011 to 105 in 2016, and the language is now taught in some schools. At the Sandstone Caves in the Pilliga, which Gamilaraay people help manage, signs are written in Gamilaraay first and English second.

Our maps label this country Kamilaroi in 1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783 and 1800, with the Wiradjuri to the south; the outline is only an approximation of a nation whose people have lived there far longer than those dates. For the wider story of colonisation, see Australia.