Warlpiri

North-west of Alice Springs, the Tanami Desert of Australia's Northern Territory is the homeland of the Warlpiri. They number some 5,000 to 6,000, living mostly in towns and settlements on their own country, and about 3,000 still speak Warlpiri, which has more speakers than most Aboriginal languages. They also call themselves Yapa, "people", and older books spell their name Walbiri or Wailbri.

Warlpiri belongs to the large Pama–Nyungan family; its closest relative is Warlmanpa. There are four main dialects, centred on Yuendumu, Willowra, Lajamanu and the Hanson River, and most speakers also use English and often several other languages. At Lajamanu, young people have developed a new mixed language, Light Warlpiri, drawing on Warlpiri, English and Kriol. Warlpiri also has an avoidance style of speech used between relatives who should not speak freely, such as a woman and her son-in-law, and a rich sign language, used among other times by women in mourning who may not speak aloud. The widely used word for the Dreaming, Jukurrpa, is Warlpiri.

Warlpiri country lies east of the Western Australian border and west of the Stuart Highway; its traditional extent has been estimated at some 53,000 square miles. Because Europeans saw little of value in this dry land, and it lay far from the telegraph line and main roads, Warlpiri life was disturbed later and less than that of several neighbouring peoples. By the 1980s the Warlpiri had moved into parts of Anmatyerre country as the Anmatyerre population fell. The largest communities today are Lajamanu, Nyirripi, Yuendumu, Alekarenge and Willowra, and many Warlpiri live in Alice Springs, Tennant Creek and Katherine.

Between 15 August and 13 September 1928, during a severe drought, police-led punitive expeditions around Coniston cattle station killed many Warlpiri, Anmatyerre and Kaytetye people after the killing of a white dingo hunter. Official records gave 31 dead; later analysis of documents, remains and Aboriginal oral history suggests between 70 and 300 deaths, and one recent study estimates about 90. It was the last known massacre of Aboriginal Australians carried out with official sanction and is seen by some historians as one of the final episodes of the Australian frontier wars.

Warlpiri society divides all people into eight named subsections, often called skin names, which pass in regular cycles through the generations. A person's subsection shapes how they address others, whom they should marry and which relatives they must avoid, and Warlpiri people commonly use their skin name as part of their English name. Warlpiri people have even extended the system to non-Indigenous in-laws. Song and dance mark initiation, healing, childbirth and other ceremonies.

In 1980 the Warlpiri, Kukatja and Ngarti peoples lodged a joint claim under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 for about 2,340 square kilometres where their three languages meet, and in 1985 the land commissioner recommended granting the entire area to a land trust. In 2007 the Warlpiri declared some 4 million hectares of the northern Tanami an Indigenous Protected Area, extended in 2012 over more than 10 million hectares of the southern Tanami, managed with Warlpiri rangers through the Central Land Council. An agreement with the Newmont mining company supports jobs, education and local governance, and Warlpiri communities run their own radio programming.

Many artists of the Papunya Tula movement are of Warlpiri descent, and Warnayaka Art at Lajamanu is owned by its artists, several of whom have reached the finals of the national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art awards. Designs once made on sand, wood and the body are now painted for galleries, where they carry law and tradition to new generations.

Our maps from 1600 to 1815 draw an approximate Warlpiri territory in the Tanami Desert. Neighbours include the Arrernte to the south-east, the Anmatyerre and Kaytetye to the east, the Luritja to the south, and the Gurindji, Jaru and Ngarti to the north and west.