The Ngaatjatjarra (otherwise spelt Ngadadjara) are an Indigenous Australian people of Western Australia, with communities located in the north eastern part of the Goldfields-Esperance region.
Ngaatjatjarra people live primarily in the Aboriginal communities of Warakurna, Wanarn, Tjukurla and Patjarr. Some also live in Kintore and Kiwirrkurra to the north, Docker River and Mutitjulu in the east, as well as in Warburton and further west.
Name The ethnonym Ngaatjatjarra essentially translates to "ngaatja-having", ngaatja meaning "this, here" and -tjarra meaning "with, having". Compare the neighbouring people Ngaanyatjarra, which translates to "-having", where instead "this, here" translates to .
Language
Ngaatjatjarra is mutually intelligible with Ngaanyatjarra, and both are treated as dialects of the one language.
Country Norman Tindale assigned them traditional lands he estimated as covering roughly . The centre of their traditional life was in the Warburton Ranges and in particular at a site, Warupuju Spring, where water was always available. Their eastern frontiers lay around Fort Welcome, the Blackstone Ranges, Murray Range and Mount Hinckley. In the southeast, their furthest boundary was at the Ero:tjo watering hole, south of Wangalina. To the northeast, they roamed as far as Kudjuntari in the Schwerin Mural Crescent Range and around Julia (Giles) in the Yurliya Range. Their northern range extended to Hopkins Lake and Carnegie Range and beyond the Christopher Lake. Their western limits were around Tekateka and Jalara and the Alfred Marie Ranges.
Tindale's map places the neighbouring tribes of the Ngaatjatjarra as, running clockwise, the Keiadjara and the Wenamba to their north, the Pitjantjatjara on their eastern frontier, the Nakako and Mandjindja to their south and the Ngaanyatjarra on their western borders. The AIATSIS map calls then Ngatatjara and absorbs the Keiadjara and the Wenamba in to the Martu and Pintupi respectively.
A native map of their water mythology explaining how the overarching rainbow, Tjurtiraŋo, produces the various water resources, was made for Tindale in the 1939s and is reproduced in his 1974 book.
History of contact The first white contact with the Ngaatjatjarra came relatively late. Tindale describes in detail one nuclear family of the tribe encountered in August 1935 during the Expedition of the Board for Anthropological Research of the University of Adelaide.
Culture
Social organization The practised patrilocal residence, and their marriage arrangements were based on for class system. Father's father, father, son, son's son and their brothers inherited a totem (tjukur/tuma) which bore associations with specific topographical features of the landscape that evoked the movements of the creative being in their dreaming. They practised both circumcision and subincision, in two distinct phrases, on youths undergoing initiation into full manhood, employing biface pressure-flaked stone knives ('tjimbila), which they obtained through trade with neighbouring tribes to their north, who in turn ultimately received them from their production centre in northwestern Australia.
Kinship Ngaatjatjarra kinship is classificatory, using the Iroquois system ( One's father and one's father's brother are both called , and, similarly, refers to a mother or mother's sister. "aunt" refers to a father's sister and "uncle" to a mother's brother. This system extends indefinitely, e.g. one's mother's mother's sister's daughter is a "mother", and one's mother's mother's brother's daughter is a "aunt".
Older brothers are called and older sisters . Parallel cousins are considered to be like siblings; only cross cousins are called "cousins". Younger siblings are called or . refers to all siblings and parallel cousins of the opposite sex of the speaker.
Terms for grandparents and grandchildren are self-reciprocal if the speakers are of the same sex: refers to a woman's grandmother or granddaughter, and for a man's grandfather or grandson.
Social categories
Moieties +NgaatjatjarraEnglishsun sideshade side Each Ngaatjatjarra person is divided into a moiety depending on their generation. A person always belongs to the same moiety as their siblings and cousins, grandparents and grandchildren, whereas their parents and children are in the opposite moiety. Traditionally, one shows respect to a person of the opposite moiety, as well as a certain physical distance. Each moiety is strictly distinguished in ceremonies.
Skin names Ngaatjatjarra people adopted skin names during the first half of the nineteenth century, called in Ngaatjatjarra "name", "skin, skin colour" and "symbol, metaphor". Each individual belongs to a skin name, which divide the moieties, so that people are or (also called ), whereas people are (also called ), or .
Skin names control one's marriage options, so that e.g. a woman must marry a man. They will have children, who must marry a spouse. This system makes it possible for one to identify how they are related to each other e.g. if a person meets a man, they know the latter is a mother's brother or father-in-law.
Food The Ngaatjatjarra harvested grass seeds (wakati) and worked them with rolling stones to obtain a paste for nutriment. They also gathered nicotiniana excelsior, a tobacco leaf which they dried over fire and which they chew after mixing them with ashes from burnt acacia and phyllodes.
Some words tartu (seeds pods of the river red gum used to decorate a girl's hair) tjitjimurdilja (uncircumcised youth) wana (woman's digging stick)
Alternative names
Jabungadja ("mountain Ngadja", those of the Rawlinson Ranges) Ku.rara (Pitjantjatjara exonym for Rawlinson Ranges' tribes) Nga:da Nga:dapitjardi (western tribal name for hordes in the vicinity of the Blackstone Ranges) Ngadatara (Pitjantjatjara exonym) Ngadawongga Nganadjara (Warburton Range horde name for those northeast of them near the Rawlinson Ranges) Ngatatjara, Ngadjatara, Ngadadara, Nadadjara, Ngadatjara Rumudjara Teitudjara (Nana exonym) Wan:udjara (eastern Ngadadjara name for their northern branches at Giles) Warara (northeastern hordes' name) Wirtjandja Witjandja (Warburton Range horde)
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