Bulway

Buluwai Shield: Traditional Aboriginal Rainforest People (Bama) design

The Buluwai are an Indigenous Australian people of the state of Queensland. Aboriginal Rainforest People, or Bama, had a traditional lifestyle with a rich, healthy diet of fresh water river species, rainforest fruits, nuts and seeds. The Wet Tropics landscapes also provided plant medicines, fibres for weaving and timbers for tools.

There are six Bama tribes with Bulurru as their creator god in Dreamtime Stories: Djabugay, Yirrgay, Buluwai, Gunggay, Yidindji, Ngadjan. These geographic neighbours shared boundaries, marriages, trade, ceremonies, celebrations, sacred sites, resources, knowledge, traditions, rites and lores.

Language

Harvard-Adelaide Universities Anthropological Expedition, 1938-1939 resulted in the collection of Parallel Vocabularies - up to 110 words recorded from 150 tribes across Australia. The Buluwai tribe vocabulary was recorded at Mona Mona Mission, near Kuranda, Far North Queensland. Other speakers recorded in later work included Wurrmbul Balawai Gilpin Banning and Warren Brim.

Country

The Buluwai are rainforest people of the Atherton Tableland, occupying, according to Norman Tindale, some 200 square miles (520 km²) in the area east of Tolga, and extending on north to Kuranda.

Alternative names

• Buluwandji
• Bulwandji, Buluwandyi, Bulwandyi
• Bulway

History

In Cairns region, the Frontier Wars started over 80 years after the first British ship arrived in Sydney 1788; then taking decades for the colonial frontier to move up through Queensland to reach the far north. Atherton 1875, Cairns 1876, Port Douglas 1877, Emerald End 1877 and Kuranda 1888 townships were "Established" by the colonial invaders, displacing the former settlements of Bama people across the region.

Decades of Frontier Wars saw the massacre of most Bama living from coast to tablelands: by disease, guns, poison, fire and imprisonment. The Bama population was reduced to only hundreds, the survivors then forcibly removed from their homelands and incarcerated at Yarrabah 1893 and Mona Mona 1913 Aboriginal Missions.

From 1913 Mona Mona Mission, Djabugay country north of Kuranda, was home to people from Djabugay and neighbouring Kuku Yalanji, Muluridgi, Buluwai, Yirrgay, Gunggay, Yidindji, Ngadjan and Mbabaram tribes. The mission was repository for people surviving the massacres and remained open for generations (49 years), finally closed it’s dormitories in 1962 due to plans for damming Flaggy Creek.

The generational dislocation and disruption of Bama families and tribal culture was catastropic. When the mission closed, the Mona Mona Descendants were relocated to Kuranda, Top Kowrowa, Bottom Kowrowa, Koah, Cairns and Mareeba where the following generations continue to reside.

In 1938-9 Norman Tindale and Joseph Birdsell travelled with their wives by truck on an expedition from the SA Museum to visit and record an anthropological time capsule of 150 Aboriginal tribes across Australia. Tindale created genealogies of Aboriginal families, for up to three generations, and recorded the Bama people living at Mona Mona.

In the Wet Tropics rainforest, Joseph Birdsell noted a separate grouping where “Physical characteristics of the Barrinean type, in addition to diminutive stature, include the un-Australian characteristic of crisp curly hair.” The Ngatjan tribe were living at Lakes Barrine and Eacham on the tablelands.

The BIRDSELL GROUPING (12 tribes of short-statured/ pygmy people): Ngatjan, Mamu, Wanjuru, Tjapukai, Barbaram, Idindji, Kongkandji, Buluwai, Djiru, Djirubal, Gulngai, Keramai

World Heritage

In 2012, this grouping was recognised in the World Heritage listing as Aboriginal Rainforest People:

Wet Tropics National Heritage listed for Indigenous heritage values The Aboriginal Rainforest Peoples of the Wet Tropics of Queensland have lived continuously in the rainforest environment for at least [6]5,000 years and this is the only place in Australia where Aboriginal peoples have permanently inhabited a tropical rainforest environment.

The Aboriginal Rainforest Peoples developed a distinctive cultural heritage determined by their dreamtime and creation stories and their traditional food gathering, processing and land management techniques.

Reliance on their traditions helped them survive in this at times inhospitable environment. The distinctiveness of the traditions and technical innovation and expertise needed to process and prepare toxic plants as food and their uses of fire is of outstanding heritage value to the nation and are now protected for future generations under national environmental law.

Sources

• Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Buluwai (QLD)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University Press. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)