Ngunnawal and Gundungurra are Aboriginal languages from Australia. They belong to the Pama-Nyungan language family. Ngunnawal is the traditional language of the Ngunnawal people, and Gundungurra is the traditional language of the Gandangara people. These two languages are very closely related and are often seen as dialects of the same language.
One way to classify these languages groups them with Ngarigo. Together, they are called the Southern Tableland languages of New South Wales.
Country
Traditional lands of the Ngunnawal peoples of New South WalesArt at Yankee Hat, possibly an echidna
When European settlers first arrived in the 1820s, the Ngunnawal-speaking Indigenous people lived in this area.
According to early researcher R. H. Mathews, their land stretched from Goulburn to Yass and Boorowa, going south as far as Lake George in the east and Goodradigbee in the west. South of Lake George lived the Nyamudy people, who spoke a Ngarigo dialect. More recent research by Harold Koch and others shows that Ngunnawal land was mainly around the Yass River, between Lake George to the east and the Murrumbidgee River to the west. The southern edge of Ngunnawal land was north of Canberra, roughly along a line from Gundaroo to Wee Jasper. Sometimes, the Burragorang language area, reaching as far north as near Young, is also included as Ngunnawal land, which would mean there were over a thousand Ngunnawal people in the 1830s.
There was a big battle for control of the land at Sutton between a group of invading Ngunnawal people and the Nyamudy people. The Ngunnawal won this battle and took control of the land. Their territory did not extend further south along the Yass River than Gundaroo.
People
The Ngunawal people were northern neighbours of the Nyamudy/Namadgi people who lived to the south on the Limestone Plains. The Wiradjuri (to the west) and Gundungurra (to the north) peoples also bordered the Ngunnawal.
Dispute over traditional ownership
Currently, three groups claim traditional ownership of the Canberra area: the Ngambri, the Ngarigo, and the Walgalu speaking Ngambri-Guumaal, represented by Shane Mortimer. The Ngambri-Guumaal have connections from the Snowy Mountains to the Blue Mountains.
In the 1830s, settlers reported three groups in the region: the Ngunnawal, the Nyamudy/Namadgi, and the Ngarigo.
The current dispute began when Jon Stanhope, the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory at the time, said that "Ngambri is the name of one of a number of family groups that make up the Ngunnawal nation." He also said the government recognized the Ngunnawal nation as descendants of the original people of the region. This statement was incorrect. It was based on talking with people of mixed heritage who had some Ngunnawal ancestry and whose families had moved from Yass in the 1920s.
In 2012, a government research report called "Our Kin, Our Country" found no strong evidence to support any family's claim as original owners. The report said the language spoken in Canberra was a dialect of Ngarigo, related but different from dialects spoken in Tumut and Monaro.
Some Aboriginal people in the Canberra area, including Matilda House, identify as Ngambri. Shane Mortimer calls himself Ngambri-Guumwaal, with Guumwaal meaning "high country." However, many other local Aboriginal people disagree with this claim. They say the Ngambri are a small family who only took the name from the Sullivan's Creek area near Black Mountain in the late 1990s.
Native Title
The earliest clear evidence of Aboriginal people living in the Canberra area comes from a rock shelter near Birrigai, close to Tharwa. This site has been dated to about 25,000 years ago. However, it is likely that people lived in the region even earlier, based on older sites found nearby.
The Ngunnawal people began to be pushed out of the Yass area in the 1820s when settlers started farming the land. Some Aboriginal people worked on these farms. In 1826, many Aboriginal people at Lake George protested after a shepherd had an incident with an Aboriginal woman, but the protest ended peacefully.
Historical records say that the last "full-blooded" Ngunnawal person, Nellie Hamilton, died in 1897. However, this is disputed by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians because many Ngunnawal people still live today.
↑Bell, Eric Bernard (2011). "Looking Back: My Story"(PDF). p.24. George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines in Victoria, who toured through the Yass area in 1844 and stayed with Hamilton Hume, commented "The Yass and Bathurst Blacks in the early settling of the Colony were said to have been troublesome, and that in consequence Commandoes had gone out against them", White and Cane repeat this. They also mention "one of these encounters involved the colonial government sending a detachment of soldiers in 1826 to disperse a large and hostile gathering of Ngunnawal Aborigines at Lake George". My friend, Dr Ann Jackson-Nakano, who has made a close study of the Lake George communities gives a detailed background to this hostility. "Communities banded together in large numbers to avenge the taking of their women by European stockmen at Lake George and Lake Bathurst. It incensed these groups enough when their Indigenous neighbours stole wives, as Govett and others described it, but they would not tolerate their women being taken by Europeans." (p 25; Weereewa History Series Volume 1).
