Karajarri

The Karajarri, also spelt Garadjara, are an Aboriginal Australian people of Western Australia. They live south-west of the Kimberleys in the northern Pilbara region, predominantly between the coastal area and the Great Sandy Desert. They now mostly reside at Bidyadanga, south of Broome. To their north live the Yawuru people, to the east the Mangala, to the northeast the Nyigina, and to their south the Nyangumarta. Further down the coast are the Kariera.

The first description of the grammar of their language, Garadjeri, was published by Gerhardt Laves in 1931. It belongs to the Marngu branch of the Pama-Nyungan language family. The native conceptualisation of its varieties recognises four dialect forms, the Najanaja (or Murrkut) dialect spoken by coastal Karajarri, Nangu spoken in the central hinterlands and Nawurtu further east inland^[clarify]. Garadjeri has had a notable influence on the Yawuru language, many of whose terms for ceremonies, and for naming the indigenous flora and fauna, have been borrowed from the Karajarri. As of 2004^[update], less than 20 native speakers remain. Together with Nyangumarta, Karrajarri shows some features that are exceptional within the Kimberley Pama-Nyungan languages, in having bound pronominals affixed to inflecting verbs.

According to Norman Tindale, Karajarri territory covers about 5,500 square miles (14,000 km²). Running from Cape Villaret on the south of Roebuck Bay until a point 10 miles (16 km) north of Jawinja, at the intertribal corroboree gathering site known as Manari. Their inland extension reaches east as far as 70 miles (110 km). Notable Karajarri sites marking their boundaries are at Lendjarkading, Redjarth, Undurmadatj and Mount Phire (Paijara).

The Karajarri are divided into two distinct groups, those who inhabit the coastal areas, called Naja (Nadja), and the inlanders dwelling on the eastern plains and bushlands, the Nawutu (Naudu). The social hierarchy is headed by ritual leaders (pirrka, literally 'roots of a tree'), male elders who organise ceremonial life, and who are also responsible for management of the country and the general affairs of tribal members. Members of a Karajarri group are classified in four ways, panaka, purrungu, parrjari and karimpa, a tribal taxonomy that is determined by alternate generation levels distinguished along moiety lines called inara. Thus one inara, represented by the barn swallow, is panaka-purrungu, being constituted by self, grandparents, sisters, brothers, cousins and grandchildren, together with marriageable partners and their siblings, the other, karimpa-parrjarri, is inclusive of one's mother, father, aunts, uncles, great grandparents and grandchildren, and is emblemised in terms of the fork-tailed swift. Both the fork-tailed swift and barn swallow are viewed as heralds of rain.

Pukarri (dream) connote states of reality formed in the mythic Dreamtime when the landscape was created, and exercises a binding, inviolable force, the word being applied to institutional practices that are traced back to the primal order of things in a given tribal country. Marriage and kinship relationships are influenced by factors related to the implications that arise from their legends concerning the "living waters".

The area encompassed by Karajarri lands sits on the La Grange sub-basin, one of the richest groundwater areas in Western Australia, and a Pindan ecology, the pirra of the Karajarri inland, with stygofauna which has yet to be studied in any depth.

The Karajarri perceive their world (ngurrara 'one's own country') in terms of a mythology that weaves seamlessly together all the features of the landscape, the language and customs, a nexus which was then reflected in ritual practices. The language itself, as is generally the case among indigenous cultures of Australia, is thought of in terms of particular stretches of country, and each form was first spoken by the Dreamtime being who wandered the land, speaking each tongue depending on the tract of land where its speakers came to dwell.

In the Karajarri conception, one shared by many other nations in the region, such as the Nyigina, Yawuru, Nyangumarta and Mangala, the land is understood as coming from the "Dreaming", of which they are the custodians. Given the scarcity of fresh water, what they call "living water", the Karajarri secured their resources by a system of wells, soaks and springs throughout the wetlands. The management of the water is dictated by the need to respect and placate powerful serpentine beings in the waters. The concept may reflect, etymology suggests, a residue of the conception of a rainbow serpent, still attested in Arnhem Land lore. The word may be linked to the Arnhem land variant.)