Koinmerburra people
Koinmerburra people
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Koinmerburra people

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Koinmerburra people

The Koinmerburra people, also known as Koinjmal, Guwinmal, Kungmal and other variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Queensland. They are the traditional owners of an area which includes part of the Great Barrier Reef.

Koinmerburra traditional lands covered an estimated 4,100 square kilometres (1,600 sq mi), taking in the western slopes of Pine Mountain in the Normanby Range to the Styx River. They occupied the coastal strip from Broad Sound northwards to Cape Palmerston and took in St. Lawrence. Their inland extensions went as far as the Coast Range, and, to the south, ended around Marlborough. Ecologically, they worked large areas of mangrove mudflats, and employed bark canoes to navigate these shoreline zones.

The Koinmerburra consisted of several kin groups, the name of at least one of which is known:

According to an early Rockhampton informant, W. H. Flowers, responding to a request for information by Alfred William Howitt, the Koinjmal were divided into two moieties, the Yungeru and the Witteru, each in turn subdivided into two sections, creating 4 sub-classes:

The Yungeru were split into the Kurpal (Eaglkehawk totem) and the Kuialla (Laughing jackass totem): the Witteru divided into the Karilbura and Munaal, which had several totems, including the wallaby, Curlew, Hawk, Clearwater and Sand.

According to Flowers, marriages were contracted early, in infancy, when a girl's parents would arrange her marriage to an elder man, who, after the ceremony of betrothal would supply her regularly with game and fish, while scrupulously avoiding going near the camp of her parents or speaking to the mother.

The ceremony was finalised in the following manner:

The parents having painted the girl and dressed her hair with feathers, her male cousin takes her to where her future husband is sitting cross-legged in silence, and seats her at his back, and close to him. He who has brought the girl after a time removes the feathers from her hair and places them in the hair of her future husband, and then leads the girl back to her parents.

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