Kaytetye

The Stuart Highway now cuts through Kaytetye country, between Tennant Creek and Barrow Creek in the Northern Territory. The Kaytetye, whose name is pronounced roughly "kay-ditch" and has also been written Kaititya and Kaytej, are Aboriginal people whose lands include Karlu Karlu, the boulder field known in English as the Devils Marbles. Their country lay on the route of the Overland Telegraph, and reprisal killings after a clash there in 1874 devastated them.

Kaytetye belongs to the Arandic branch of the Pama–Nyungan family and is related to Alyawarr, one of the Upper Arrernte dialects. It is known to linguists for an unusual sound system: words begin with a vowel and end in a weak schwa, there are only two productive vowels, and there are many consonants, including pre-stopped and pre-palatalised ones. Its pronouns are unusually rich, distinguishing not only number and inclusion but also moiety and generation, so that there are twelve words for "we". The language is used across all generations but is losing ground: the 2021 census found only 109 speakers. Kaytetye people also use a rich sign language, Akitiri.

Norman Tindale estimated Kaytetye lands at about 12,500 square miles, south-east of Tennant Creek, taking in the Davenport and Murchison Ranges, the Frew River and the headwaters of the Elkedra, and Taylor and Barrow creeks. Their neighbours are the Warumungu to the north, the Alyawarre to the east, the Anmatyerre to the south and the Warlpiri to the west. Like the Anmatyerre, they have an eight-subsection kinship system of the Aranda type. Barrow Creek is known to the Kaytetye as Thangkenharenge, and the area holds the site of their creation story.

Europeans entered Kaytetye country with John McDouall Stuart's expeditions from 1860 and the survey for the Overland Telegraph that followed. In 1874 Kaytetye men attacked the Barrow Creek telegraph station, reportedly in response to breaches of their law concerning sacred sites or women, and two Europeans were killed. Police and settlers then carried out a series of reprisal killings; an inspector had advised that strict legal forms need not be followed. Official reports admitted two Aboriginal deaths, while unofficial estimates range from 50 to 90, and some writers put the toll in the hundreds. Neighbouring peoples also suffered. In 1928, during the Coniston massacre, a police party killed at least 31 Kaytetye, Warlpiri and Anmatyerre people according to a later inquiry; Aboriginal oral accounts give higher numbers.

Kaytetye people worked on pastoral stations and in mining for decades on unequal terms. During the Second World War an army settlement near Barrow Creek employed many Kaytetye men and women and treated them fairly, which forced pastoralists to improve conditions to keep their workers. Karlu Karlu, a sacred Dreaming site, has at times been damaged: granite taken from it for the tomb of John Flynn, the "Flying Doctor", was later returned after protests.

Our maps from 1600 to 1815 (1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783, 1800 and 1815) draw an approximate Kaytetye territory, labelled Kaytej, between the Warumungu and the Alyawarre, with the Anmatyerre and the Wakaya nearby. See also Aboriginal Australians and Australia.