Kartudjara

See also: Kartudjara language

The Kartudjara are an indigenous Australian people of Western Australia.

Country

The Kartudjara's traditional lands extended over 10,000 square miles (26,000 km²) from Madaleri, north of Lake Disappointment around Well 22 down southwest towards Pulpuruma (Well 12). Their western boundary lay on the southern side of the Rudall River as far as the Robertson Range and the eastern headwaters of both the Jigalong and Savory Creeks. The country was characterized by endemic parallel sand-dune formations.

History

Around the 1890s the Kartudjara pressured the Niabali to their northwest, off Savory Creek, forcing them to move roughly 60 miles to Balfour Downs. The Kartudjara thereafter went on to water at the Rudall River, which became in time their northern frontier. Their neighbours beyond the mulga were the spinifex plainsmen, the Wanman and the Nyangumarta.

The Kartudjara became, in recent times, one of the two core constituent tribal groups forming the Martu. That term actually signified 'northerners', but originally was used primarily to denote people who had undergone initiation rites to become fully-fledged tribesmen.

Some Kartudjara were received as 'lawmen' by the coastal peoples to their west in the post-war period, since they, like other desert tribes, had conserved the traditional ceremonial lore that had been lost to tribes on the Indian Ocean's coastal areas.

Alternative names

• Katudjara, Katatjara, Kardudjara.
• Gadudjara.
• Walmala.
• Orailku.
• Ngadari.('strangers'.)

Sources

• "AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australia". AIATSIS.
• "Tindale Tribal Boundaries" (PDF). Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Western Australia. September 2016.
• Brown, A. R. (January–June 1913). "Three Tribes of Western Australia". The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 43: 143–194. JSTOR 2843166. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gray, Dennis (March 1978). "A Revival of the Law: The Probable Spread of Initiation Circumcision to the Coast of Western Australia". Oceania. 48 (3): 188–201. JSTOR 40330353. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Kartudjara (WA)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-708-10741-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)