Arabana people

The Arabana, also known as the Ngarabana, are an Aboriginal Australian people of South Australia.

Performance of tritichinna ceremony of snake totem, Urabunna Tribe, Lake Eyre (pub. in The commonwealth of Australia; federal handbook, prepared in connection with the eighty-fourth meeting of the British association for the advancement of science, held in Australia, August, 1914 by George Handley Knibbs

Name

The older tribal autonym was Ngarabana, which may have been misheard by white settlers as Arabana, the term now generally accepted by new generations of the Ngarabana.

Language

Arabana, like Wangganguru with which it shares a 90% overlap in vocabulary, is a member of the Karnic subgroup of the Pama-Nyungan language.

Country

In Norman Tindale's estimation, the Arabana controlled some 19,500 square miles (51,000 km²) of tribal land. They were present at the Neales River to the west of Lake Eyre, and west as far as the Stuart Range; Macumba Creek. Southwards their lands extended to Coward Springs. Their terrain also took in Oodnadatta, Lora Creek and Lake Cadibarrawirracanna.

The neighbouring tribes were the Kokata to the west, with the frontier between the two marked by the scarp of the western tableland near Coober Pedy. To their east were the Wangkanguru.

Native Title

In 2012, the National Native Title Tribunal issued a consent determination in the matter of Dodd versus the State of South Australia. The Tribunal found that the Arabana maintained strong and enduring connections to country, each other and their culture. As a result, the Arabana were granted native title for more than 68,000 km² in northern South Australia. The Arabana Aboriginal Corporation is responsible for the lands today.

Mythology

Several traditional stories are well documented, especially that regarding a man-eating Buzzard and his Eaglehawk mate. The chief protagonists are three animals: (1) Wantu Wantu, the man-eating Black-breasted Buzzard; (2) Irritye or Irretye, a friendly Wedge-tailed Eagle; and (3) Kutta Kutta (variantly called Akwete Akwete) who, though described as a small hawk is actually the Spotted nightjar.

History of contact

The Arabana were interviewed at Old Peake Station and Thantyiwanparda in the nearby gidgee scrub by Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis James Gillen over a ten-day period in August 1903 for a specific purpose. Their earlier work had argued that the truly "primitive" nature of the Arrernte was indicated by the fact that their totemic identities came from the spirit responsible for making individuals' mothers pregnant. James Frazer adopted this to buttress his theories on the development phases of "primitive societies". A Scottish amateur ethnographer Andrew Lang contested their interpretations of the Arrernte, arguing that they were not "primitive", a label he argued was more appropriate to their near neighbours the Arabana, who traced descent through the mother and linked their totemic system to exogamy. It was to address this challenge that accounted for Spencer and Gillen's return to Arabana lands.

Today, cross-cultural research collaborations are building on Arabana traditional knowledge and colonial and pastoral experiences to develop new ways of approaching modeling climate change.

Social organisation

The Arabana were divided into kin groups, whose respective territories were called wadlu.

• Jendakarangu (Coward Springs)
• Peake tribe
• Anna Creek tribe

Their moieties were named Mathari and Kararru.

Alternative names

• Arabuna, Arrabunna, Arrabonna, Arubbinna
• Arapani
• Arapina. (Iliaura pronunciation)
• Ngarabana
• Nulla
• Rabuna (an occasional Aranda pronunciation)
• Urapuna, Urabuna, Urabunna, Urroban
• Wangarabana. ([a term reflecting a word woqka /wagka meaning "speech")
• Wongkurapuna, Wangarabunna
• Yendakarangu

Source: Tindale 1974, p. 210

Some words

• kutyu. ritual assassin, kurdaitcha
• thanthani (cormorant) also the name of a totem.

Source: Gibson & Hercus 2018, p. 207, n.37

Notes

Sources

• Basedow, Herbert (1925). The Australian Aboriginal. F.W. Preece and Sons.
• Bates, Daisy (2018). "Aborigines of the West Coast of South Australia; vocabularies and ethnological notes". Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia. 42. Adelaide: 152–167 – via BHL.
• East, J. J. (1889). Aborigines of South and Central Australia. Adelaide.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Elkin, A. P. (September 1931). "The Social Organization of South Australian Tribes". Oceania. 2 (1): 44–73. doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.1931.tb00022.x. JSTOR 40327353.
• Elkin, A. P. (March 1940a). "Kinship in South Australia (Continued)". Oceania. 10 (3): 295–349. doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.1940.tb00295.x. JSTOR 40327772.
• Elkin, A. P. (June 1940b). "Kinship in South Australia (Continued)". Oceania. 10 (4): 369–388. doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.1940.tb00302.x. JSTOR 40327864.
• Eylmann, Erhard (1908). Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Südaustralien (PDF). Berlin: D.Reimer – via Internet Archive.
• Gibson, Jason; Hercus, Luise A. (December 2018). Roberts, Amy; Wesley, Daryl (eds.). "Capturing Histories at Thantyu-Wanparda: Comparising early and late twentieth century ethnographies in Arabana Territory, South Australia". Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia. 32: 175–210.
• Helms, Richard (1896). "Anthropology of the Elder Exploring Expedition. 1871-1872". Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia. 16. Adelaide: 237–332 – via BHL.
• Hercus, Luise A. (1968). "Some aspects of the form and use of the trial number in Victorian languages and Arabana". Mankind. 6 (8): 335–337.
• Hercus, Luise A. (2011). "Murkarra, a landscape nearly forgotten" (PDF). In Hercus, Luise A.; Koch, Harold (eds.). Aboriginal Placenames: Naming and re-naming the Australian landscape. ANU E Press/Aboriginal History. pp. 257–272. ISBN 978-1-921-66608-7.
• Howitt, Alfred William (1904). The native tribes of south-east Australia (PDF). Macmillan.
• Howitt, Alfred William; Siebert, Otto (January–June 1904). "Legends of the Dieri and Kindred Tribes of Central Australia". The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 34: 100–129. doi:10.2307/2843089. JSTOR 2843089.
• Knibbs, George Handley, ed. (18 July 1914). "The commonwealth of Australia; federal handbook, prepared in connection with the eighty-fourth meeting of the British association for the advancement of science, held in Australia, August, 1914". Melbourne: A. J. Mullet, government printer. Retrieved 18 July 2019 – via Internet Archive.
• "Lora Creek, Australia - Geographical Names, map, geographic coordinates". geographic.org. Retrieved 18 July 2019.
• Mathews, R. H. (January 1900). "Divisions of the South Australian Aborigines". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 39 (161): 78–91+93. JSTOR 983545.
• Parker, K. Langloh (1905). The Euahlayi tribe; a study of aboriginal life in Australia (PDF). A. Constable & Co. – via Internet Archive.
• Shaw, Bruce (1995). Our Heart Is the Land: Aboriginal Reminiscences from the Western Lake Eyre Basin. Aboriginal Studies Press. ISBN 978-0-855-75569-0.
• Spencer, Sir Baldwin; Gillen, Francis J. (1904). Northern Tribes of Central Australia (PDF). Macmillan Publishers – via Internet Archive.
• Spencer, Sir Baldwin; Gillen, Francis J. (1912). Across Australia (PDF). Vol. 2. Macmillan Publishers – via Internet Archive.
• Strehlow, C. (1910). Leonhardi, Moritz von (ed.). Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien Part 3 (PDF). Joseph Baer & Co.
• Taplin, George (1879). Folklore, manners, customs and languages of the South Australian aborigines (PDF). Adelaide: E Spiller, Acting Government Printer – via Internet Archive.
• Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University Press. ISBN 978-0-708-10741-6.

Further reading

• "Aboriginal people of South Australia: Arabana". LibGuides at State Library of South Australia. 26 August 2020.