Ngarinyin

The Ngarinyin, whose name is also written Ngarinjin, belong to the rugged central Kimberley of Western Australia. When speaking of their land they call themselves the Wilinggin people, and together with the neighbouring Worrorra and Wunambal they share the law and beliefs of the Wanjina Wunggurr tradition.

Norman Tindale put Ngarinyin lands at about 27,000 square kilometres (10,500 square miles). They ran from Walcott Inlet in the west across the Isdell valley to the Phillips Range and the headwaters of the Chapman River, bounded in the south-east by the Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges and in the north by the Barnett and Harris ranges and the upper Drysdale River. Before Europeans arrived, the Ngarinyin appear to have been expanding southwards into the country of the Bunuba.

Ngarinyin society was made up of about 40 local groups, each with its own clan and moiety affiliations. The Wanjina Wunggurr tradition that they share with the Worrorra and Wunambal traces law and life to two kinds of ancestral power: the Wanjina, spirits tied to particular places and clans, and Wunggurr, a creator being akin to the Rainbow Serpent. Rock paintings of Wanjina, together with the Gwion Gwion figures, are visible evidence of this shared culture.

The German ethnographer Helmut Petri lived among the Ngarinyin during the Frobenius expedition of 1938–39 and gathered extensive notes and objects. Much of his material was lost when Allied bombing destroyed his museum in Frankfurt during the Second World War.

Ngarinyin, sometimes called Ungarinyin, is one of three Worrorran languages. There were 82 speakers in 2003, and only 38 people reported using it at home in the 2016 census. Younger people now mostly speak Kriol, though many keep some knowledge of the old language, and efforts are under way to document its grammar and its unusual kinship terms, in which a single word can cover relatives several generations apart.

In 1998 the three Wanjina Wunggurr peoples lodged a joint native title claim. The Wilinggin part was the first to be decided, on 27 August 2004, covering more than 60,000 square kilometres along the Gibb River Road. The Wanjina Wunggurr body now manages native title on behalf of all three groups. The Wilinggin National Park, to be run jointly by the state and traditional owners, was announced in January 2017. In June 2023 a newly formed women's ranger team carried out the first survey of golden bandicoots on Wilinggin country, working with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

Our maps draw approximate Ngarinyin territory in 1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783, 1800 and 1815, between the Worrorra and Wunambal towards the coast and the Gija to the south-east, with the Jaru further south. See also Australia.