Nyangumarta

From the long shoreline of Eighty Mile Beach inland into the Great Sandy Desert stretches the country of the Nyangumarta, an Aboriginal Australian nation of Western Australia's north-west coast. Their language is still spoken by a few hundred people, and Nyangumarta men and women played leading parts in the Pilbara strike of the 1940s. Their traditional ownership was recognised by the Federal Court in 2009.

Norman Tindale described two branches: the Kundal, mostly on the northern coast, and the Iparuka to the south and inland. He estimated their lands at about 41,000 square kilometres (16,000 square miles) and 22,500 square kilometres (8,700 square miles) respectively. Together they ran from the Great Sandy Desert south to Eighty Mile Beach, taking in what are now Pardoo, Wallal Downs and Anna Plains stations. The linguist Geoffrey O'Grady put their original extent at the start of colonial contact rather smaller, at about 7,000 square miles, and argued that the reach of their language had grown considerably since. Many names were used among the bands, such as a northern term meaning "southern waters people" and one applied jointly to the coastal Nyangumarta and their Karajarri neighbours.

Together with Mangarla and Karajarri, Nyangumarta makes up the Marrngu group of Pama–Nyungan languages, and the three share much grammar and vocabulary. It has two main dialects: Ngurlipartu in the south and inland, and Wanyarli on the northern coast. Speaker numbers fell from an estimated 1,000 in 1975 to around 240 in 2021, yet no Aboriginal language is more widely spoken in Port Hedland. Its grammar includes singular, dual and plural numbers, with separate "we" forms that include or exclude the listener, and pronoun endings attached to the verb, unusual in the Pilbara.

Hundreds of Aboriginal pastoral workers left stations across the Pilbara on 1 May 1946 to demand wages and fair conditions, beginning a strike that lasted until August 1949. One of its principal leaders, the lawman Dooley Bin Bin, was Nyangumarta, as was Jacob Oberdoo, another striker and community leader. Bin Bin urged non-violence, telling strikers to accept arrest rather than fight. The Nyangumarta woman Daisy Bindi organised meetings in the south-eastern Pilbara before the strike and led 96 workers off Roy Hill Station to join it.

Most Nyangumarta now make their homes in the towns of Port Hedland, Broome and Bidyadanga, but they continue to travel regularly to their own country. In 2009 the Federal Court of Australia recognised their traditional ownership of it.

Our maps draw approximate Nyangumarda territory in 1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783, 1800 and 1815, with the Karajarri to the north, the Nyamal to the south-west and the Mangarla inland. The desert homelands of the Martu lie to the south-east. See also Australia.