Yankunytjatjara

The Yankunytjatjara are Aboriginal people of the far north-west of South Australia, among the easternmost of the peoples who speak the Western Desert language. Their country runs from the Musgrave Ranges east to the Everard Ranges, and together with the Pitjantjatjara they gave their names to the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, returned to Aboriginal ownership in 1981.

Yankunytjatjara is a dialect of the Western Desert language, mutually intelligible with its relatives and especially close to Pitjantjatjara. The name comes from the word for "coming" or "going": Yankunytjatjara speakers say yankunytja where Pitjantjatjara speakers say pitjantja, and the suffix -tjara means "having". In everyday speech one syllable is usually dropped, giving "Yankunytjara". Speakers also group dialects by other words: northern Yankunytjatjara shares the word maṯu, "true", with southern Luritja, while southern Yankunytjatjara uses mula.

Today the language is spoken mainly around Mimili, Indulkana and Fregon and across to Oodnadatta and Coober Pedy, the last lying on what was traditionally Arabana land. A national survey in 2005 judged it "definitely endangered", and young speakers often borrow from English and from Pitjantjatjara, which has spread eastward into Yankunytjatjara country. At the 2021 census it was the home language of 10.6 per cent of residents of the APY Lands, compared with 14.3 per cent in 2006.

Norman Tindale estimated the Yankunytjatjara lands at about 22,000 square miles. Their kinship terms share much with those of the Pitjantjatjara and Pintupi. One south-western group was known to the Pitjantjatjara as Kaltjilandjara, and older records also name the people the Everard Range tribe.

Church and government settlements came to the region in the mid-20th century. Around 1961, according to some accounts, the Church founded the community now called Kaltjiti, then known as Fregon, and in about 1968 the South Australian government established Indulkana as a base for welfare services to people living in camps on pastoral stations. British nuclear tests in the 1950s also touched Yankunytjatjara lives: the activist Yami Lester, a Yankunytjatjara man, was blinded as a boy after the "black mist" from the Emu 1 test of 15 October 1953 passed over his family's camp. His later campaigning helped bring about the McClelland Royal Commission of 1985.

The Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Land Rights Act of 1981 gave freehold title over the APY Lands to their Aboriginal owners, under an elected executive board. Indulkana (Iwantja), Mimili and Kaltjiti are now among the main communities on the Lands, each with its own art centre, and visitors need a permit to enter. Prominent Yankunytjatjara people have included the Indigenous rights campaigner Lowitja O'Donoghue and the anti-nuclear activist Eileen Kampakuta Brown, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize.

Our maps from 1600 to 1815 (1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783, 1800 and 1815) draw an approximate Yankunytjatjara territory, labelled Yankuntjatjara, between the Pitjantjatjara to the west and the Antakirinja and Kokatha further south. See also Aboriginal Australians and Australia.