Njakinjaki

The Njakinjaki, also written Nyaki Nyaki, are an Aboriginal people of the south-west of Western Australia, in the inland Wheatbelt and Great Southern regions. They are one of the fourteen groups that make up the Noongar, the Aboriginal people of the south-west corner of Australia, and their country lies inland, east of Lake Grace.

The anthropologist Norman Tindale, in his 1974 catalogue of Aboriginal tribes, estimated Njakinjaki territory at about 31,000 square kilometres. He placed it east of Lake Grace, taking in Newdegate, Mount Stirling, Bruce Rock, Kellerberrin and Merredin, west to Jitarning, south to Lake King and Mount Madden, and east to near Lake Hope and Mount Holland. Tindale's catalogue itself warns that much of its data on boundaries and groups has since been revised.

Tindale recorded several names. Njagi was, in his view, a valid alternative. Neighbouring Noongar called them Njagiman, and others knew them as Kokar or Kikkar, from a word for "east", hence the description "eastward tribe". Punuatch came from a place name. According to Tindale, peoples to the south described them as strangers whose language they could not understand, unlike the cloak-wearing coastal groups, and the neighbouring Kalamaia applied to them a derogatory term used for south-western groups whose ceremonies differed from their own.

The Njakinjaki language belongs to the Nyungic branch of the Pama–Nyungan family. It has been described both as a dialect of Noongar and as a dialect of Kalaamaya, the poorly recorded language of the Kalamaia, which seems itself to be close to Noongar. Some of the few written records come from a word list collected near Mount Stirling and published in 1886 by Roger Goldsworthy in Edward Curr's survey The Australian Race. It includes words such as mamon for father, knockan for mother and yokkine for wild dog.

Noongar communities across the south-west were transformed by European colonisation in the nineteenth century, and most Noongar today trace their ancestry to one or more of the old groups, including the Njakinjaki. The Noongar are represented in land matters by the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council, formed in 2001. The South West Native Title Settlement, which includes a Recognition Act of 2016 acknowledging Noongar as the traditional owners of the south-west, covers about 200,000 square kilometres and affects about 30,000 Noongar people; as of 2020 it was described as the largest native title settlement in Australian history.

Our 1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783, 1800 and 1815 maps draw a territory labelled "Nyaki-nyaki". The outline is approximate and follows the kind of boundaries recorded in the twentieth century; Njakinjaki connection to this country is far older and continues today.