Kokatha

The Kokatha, or Kokatha Mula, are Aboriginal people whose country spans the dry plateau of northern South Australia, north of Port Augusta between Lake Torrens and the Gawler Ranges. Their lands now include the mining town of Roxby Downs and large parts of the Woomera weapons-testing range, and since 2010 land use agreements and native title determinations have recognised their rights over large parts of it.

Kokatha is a dialect of the Western Desert language. It has also been grouped with Mirning and Wirangu as a language of the far west coast, and the linguist John Platt, who published a grammar in 1972, distinguished two varieties with different links to these neighbours. The name has many spellings, among them Kukata, Gugada and Kokatja, and it is not the same as the Kukatja dialects further north. From around 1900 Kokatha, Mirning and Wirangu people lived together at Koonibba Mission, and words passed freely between their languages. A Kokatha researcher has contested older linguistic work that labelled their elders' speech as Wirangu. Today the Far West Language Centre at Ceduna supports research and revival.

Norman Tindale estimated Kokatha lands at some 54,000 square miles, about 140,000 square kilometres, of some of the driest country on the continent, taking in Tarcoola, Kingoonya, Pimba and Woomera and reaching west to Ooldea and north to the Stuart Range; at first European contact they appear to have centred on Mount Eba. The Kokatha Aboriginal Corporation describes a similar area. Their neighbours included the Wirangu to the south, the Barngarla to the south-east, the Mirning to the south-west, and the Arabana and Kuyani to the east, with the Antakirinja and Yankunytjatjara to the north.

A widely published Kokatha story tells of the hunter Nyeeruna, who pursues a group of sisters protected by their eldest, Kambugudha; the two fight with fire-magic until a line of dingo pups separates the hunter from the women. The astronomer Duane Hamacher has argued that the story describes the stars around Orion, the Pleiades and the Hyades, and even the varying brightness of the stars Betelgeuse and Aldebaran.

Dunes and trees within the Woomera range are linked to the Seven Sisters Dreaming. A 2020 heritage plan for the Department of Defence recorded rare archaeological sites there, including at least 14 stone foundations at Lake Hart North, thought to be dwellings or hunting hides, and rock engravings in the Panaramitee style at Wild Dog Creek. The report suggested the area may have been used for many thousands of years, informally up to 50,000.

The Kokatha Aboriginal Corporation holds native title for the Kokatha people. An Indigenous land use agreement for the Gawler Ranges area was made in June 2010; a determination of 5 December 2013, shared with other peoples of the far west coast, covered a broad coastal strip; and on 1 September 2014 a further determination recognised title over about 30,372 square kilometres between Lake Torrens and Lake Gairdner, an area that overlaps large parts of the Woomera Prohibited Area. Kokatha people today live in Ceduna, Koonibba, Port Augusta, Adelaide and elsewhere in the state.

Our maps from 1600 to 1815 (1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783, 1800 and 1815) draw an approximate Kokatha territory in northern South Australia, among the neighbours named above. See also Aboriginal Australians and Australia.