Ngadjuri

The Ngadjuri people are a group of Indigenous Australians whose traditional lands lie in the mid north of South Australia with a territory extending from Gawler in the south to Orroroo in the north. As with other indigenous groups in South Australia, the Ngadjuri led nomadic lives and were decimated by introduced European diseases, beginning with the spread of smallpox prior to European colonisation. ^[1] Although the lands of the Ngadjuri were extensive their principal camping and burial grounds are believed to have been at Clare, Auburn, Macaw Creek and near Kapunda.

When Anglo-European Caucasian settlers first arrived in 1836 at Holdfast Bay (now Glenelg), the land was considered in the 1834 South Australia Act passed by the British Parliament and by Governor Hindmarsh as Commander in chief in his Proclamation of 1836, to be a barren wasteland. In contrast to the rest of Australia, terra nullius did not apply to the new province. The Letters Patent establishing the Province of South Australia attached to the Act acknowledged Aboriginal ownership and stated that no actions could be undertaken that would affect the rights of any Aboriginal natives of the said province to the actual occupation and enjoyment in their own persons or in the persons of their descendants of any land therein now actually occupied or enjoyed by such natives. Under the act the native inhabitants were assumed to have become British subjects. Although the patent guaranteed land rights under force of law for the indigenous inhabitants it was ignored by the South Australian Company authorities and squatters. ^[2] By the 1870s few of the Ngadjuri remained on their traditional lands and most of those left had become dependent upon the white population through land dispossession. Although there were some late attempts to arrest their decline, by the end of the nineteenth century the language group, as it had been, had ceased to exist.

People and culture

The Ngadjuri practiced formalised burial practices with bodies sometimes smoked or dried before burial and many buried skeletons were uncovered during the construction of the Clare Railway line. Large groups of up to a hundred men would hold mass possum hunts through the timbered hills. Although ceremonies were usually male-only private events, by the 1860’s they had begun to commercialise them with the dominate capitalist culture spectators accepted and donations solicited. ^[1]

See also

• History of Adelaide

Other indigenous ethnic groups in South Australia:

• Adynyamathanha
• Arabunna
• Kaurna
• Kokatha
• Mirning
• Ngarrindjeri
• Narungga
• Pitjantjatjara
• Yankuntjara

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Noye, Robert J. (1980). CLARE – A District History. Hawthorndene, South Australia: Investigator Press. pp. 216–218. 
2. ^ Ngadjuri Walpa Juri Lands and Heritage Association (Undated). Ngadjuri. Page 73: SASOSE Council Inc. ISBN 0 646 42821 7.