TheYawuru, also speltJawuru, are anAboriginal Australian people of theKimberley region ofWestern Australia.
A Japanese linguist, Hosokawa Kōmei (細川弘明), compiled the first basic dictionary of theYawuru language in 1988,[1] and followed it up with a comprehensivedescriptive grammar in 2011.[2]
Their territory, much of it of opensaltmarsh, encompasses the area from the eastern shores ofRoebuck Bay south of Roebuck Plains through to the southern end ofThangoo Station and within 5 miles of Cape Villaret. Their inland extension[3] ran close to Dampier Downs.[4] Norman Tindale's overall estimate of their territory posits a domain of roughly 2,100 square miles (5,400 km2).[5]
Their neighbouring tribes were theJukan to the north, and, running clockwise, theWarrwa northeast, theNyigina on the eastern hinterland, and on their southern frontier theKarajarri.[6][7] The border with the latter is marked by an ecological transition from the coastal saltmarsh plains to the dense, sandypindan scrubland occupied by the Karajarri.[4]
The Yawuru people in Broome also include theDjugun and the two are distinguished only by minordialectal differences.[8]
In Yawuru cosmology, the primordial time and its world is still present in its creative force, governing social relations, informing the way one interacts with the maritime and continental landscape within their traditional territory, and securing the well-being of the community.[9] The traditionalkinship structure, typical also of other contiguous tribal groups such as theKarajarri,Nyikina andMangala, is fourfold, consisting of theBanaga and theBurungu, theGarimba and theBarrjarri, the first two in each case form the binary unit of optimal marriage choice. Children assume their kin-tribal identity through the mother. Thus, a child born to a Banaga father and a Burungu woman is classified as Barrjarri, while a Garimba woman married to a Barrjarri man produces Banaga offspring.[10]
The Yawuru recognize six seasons in the year:Barrgana,Wirlburu,Laja,Marrul,Wirralburu andMan-gala.[11][12] The dry cold season (Barrgana) coincides with a change of fishing from the open sea to thenative salmon in creeks; after a brief transitional phase (Wirlburu), theLaja period, encompassing September to November, kicks in, called "married turtle time" where abundance caches of eggs can be harvested from the beaches, and reef fishing feasible. The humidMarrul period follows, when one fishes forwhiting,trevally,queenfish andmullet.[13]
The Yawuru are a coastal people whose basic diet consisted of seafood – fish, turtles,stingrays,dugong, crabs andmangrove shells – but alsosand monitors,flying foxes, and bush food foraged in the semi-aridpindan scrub country, divided into edible bush fruits for which they have over 90 terms, covering such things as wattle seed and native tubers, to wallabies,goanna and varieties of birds fromnative hens andcrested pigeons to thebush turkey.[14] Maritime fruits were prepared, after fermentation, by heating them in abaler shell over hot coals.
Maritime hunting technology consisted of fishing spears, fishingboomerangs, fish-stunning poisons, nets made of massed grass sheaves shoved through waters to corner fish,[14] and by building rock ponds fenced with stakes fashioned from mangrove wood, whose base was woven withspinifex to trap fish in the tidal outflows. The timing for hunting stingrays was signaled by the onset ofnyalnyala blossoms from aguardo tree, which corresponded seasonally with the period of stingray fattening.[15]
The Yawuru now predominantly live in Broome, which was built on traditionalDjugun lands. Locally descendants of both groups self-identify as being one traditional group – "Jugun and Yawuru are one" – and consider the land of both as one single unit, with the majority of Djugun families assimilated into the Yawuru.[16]
Following a Federal Court decision by Justice Ron Merkel in 2010, the Yawuru people became one of thenative title holders of the Western Australian town ofBroome, including pockets of land in and around the townsite and two pastoral stations.[17]
Source:Tindale 1974, p. 243
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