Wakaya people

The Wakaya, also written Wagaya, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Northern Territory, whose country lies in the Barkly region to the north-east and east of Tennant Creek, towards the Queensland border. Like many Aboriginal peoples of the region, they experienced rapid and often violent change after pastoral settlement arrived in the 1860s, and in the late twentieth century they regained part of their land through a land claim.

The anthropologist Norman Tindale estimated the Wakaya's territory at about 15,000 square miles, roughly 39,000 square kilometres. In the traditional language geography of the area, Wakaya country is bordered by Alyawarre country to the east and south-east, Kaytetye country to the south and Warlpiri country to the west. Early records give many spellings of the name, among them Wagaja, Waggaia, Workia and Warkya, while the neighbouring Kaytetye called them Akaja.

The Wakaya language belongs to the Warluwarric, or Ngarna, subgroup of the Pama–Nyungan family, and is most closely related to Yindjilandji, Bularnu and Warluwarra. The linguist Gavan Breen, who recorded eastern and western varieties of the language, published a grammar of it in 1974. About ten speakers were reported in 1983, and the language is no longer spoken today, but Breen's recordings and grammar preserve it, and linguists have used it in comparative work on the languages of the Queensland–Northern Territory border area.

Tindale listed the Wakaya among the few Australian peoples, along with the Alyawarre, Pitjantjatjara and others, known to harvest the seeds of purslane, a small succulent plant. The seeds were threshed inside circles of stones and valued for their oily nourishment.

According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, the Wakaya first met Europeans in 1861 or 1862, when the explorer William Landsborough passed through their country while searching for the lost Burke and Wills expedition. His reports of water and pasture drew settlers, and several pastoral stations were set up between 1864 and 1867. The stations brought damage to the land and to customary life, and introduced diseases that killed many Wakaya and other Aboriginal people of the region; there were also many violent clashes between settlers and Wakaya people.

In the early 1890s a small group of Wakaya men and women joined the Wild Australia Show, a touring performance organised by Archibald Meston that travelled through Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne until mid-1893. Its publicity presented them in demeaning terms as a "wild" people, and the circumstances of their recruitment are unclear, with some accounts alleging coercion. When the show collapsed in the banking crisis of 1893, the Wakaya performers made their own way home. One of them, a senior man named Kudajarnd, was widely photographed and now has an entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

In 1980 the Wakaya and Alyawarre peoples lodged a joint land claim over country near the remote outstation of Purrukwarra. On 22 October 1992, according to the Central Land Council, the Wakaya were granted 1,874 square kilometres and the Alyawarre 2,065 square kilometres, in each case only part of the land originally claimed.

Our maps label Wakaya country on the 1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783 and 1800 maps, in the Barkly region of what is now Australia. These outlines are approximate and do not mark when the Wakaya's history began or ended; their presence on the land long predates any of these maps.