Pitjantjatjara

In the desert country around and south-west of Uluru live the Pitjantjatjara, an Aboriginal people who call themselves Aṉangu, "people". Most live in the far north-west of South Australia, with communities across the border in the Northern Territory, south of Lake Amadeus, and a short way into Western Australia. Their language is still learned by children, and in 1981 they won freehold title to a large part of their land.

Pitjantjatjara is one of the varieties of the Western Desert language, largely intelligible to speakers of its neighbours, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra; it shares about 80 per cent of its vocabulary with Yankunytjatjara. The name describes the speech itself: pitjantja means "going", and the suffix -tjara means "having", so the name marks the variety that uses that word for "going", where Yankunytjatjara uses yankunytja. Ronald Trudinger, who worked on Bible translation at Ernabella, judged the Pitjantjatjara dialects to be spoken over a wider area than any other Aboriginal language.

For the Aṉangu, land is inseparable from identity, and every part of it carries stories and meaning. Uluru and Kata Tjuṯa, just across the Northern Territory border, hold more than 40 named sacred sites and 11 Tjukurpa, or Dreaming, tracks, some running as far as the sea; the two sites now lie within a national park that has become a major tourist destination. The people lived in this country for many thousands of years and, even after the colonisation of South Australia began in 1836, met Europeans only occasionally for many decades.

As settlers pressed closer, South Australia set aside most of the present Lands as the North-West Aboriginal Reserve in 1921. In 1937 the Presbyterian Church, led by Charles Duguid, founded the Ernabella Mission, at the place now called Pukatja. The missionaries learned Pitjantjatjara and taught in it, so Aṉangu learned to read and write Pitjantjatjara before they learned English; a translation of the Gospel of Mark was published in 1949 and a full New Testament in 2002. From 1950 British nuclear tests at Maralinga forced many Aṉangu off their traditional lands, and some were exposed to fallout.

After four years of campaigning and negotiation with government and mining interests, the South Australian parliament passed the Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Act on 19 March 1981. It granted freehold title over about 103,000 square kilometres in the north-west of the state, now the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, governed by an elected executive board with its administrative centre at Umuwa. At the 2021 census the Lands had 2,333 residents, and Pitjantjatjara was the home language of 68.7 per cent. Communities include Pukatja, Amata, Kalka and Pipalyatjara in South Australia, as well as Yalata and Oak Valley, and Kaltukatjara, Areyonga and Mutitjulu in the Northern Territory.

Pitjantjatjara remains a relatively healthy language. Bilingual schooling on the Lands was defunded in the late 1980s, but in 2018 the South Australian government committed to teaching in Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara, with English taught as a second language, by 2029. An archive project, Ara Irititja, has gathered historical materials since 1994. APY artists are widely exhibited, and a collective of art centres, the oldest being Ernabella Arts, supports more than 500 Aṉangu artists.

Our maps from 1600 to 1815 draw an approximate Pitjantjatjara territory around and south-west of Uluru. Neighbours include the Yankunytjatjara, Ngaatjatjarra and Luritja, with the Pintupi to the north and the Martu further west; the Arrernte lie to the east.