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The Warumungu (or Warramunga) are a group of Aboriginal Australians of the Northern Territory. Today, Warumungu are mainly concentrated in the region of Tennant Creek and Alice Springs. Warumungu language calls Alice Springs Warm Springs, and this is its original name.
Warumungu is classified as a living language, but the number of speakers seemed to be decreasing quickly and by the mid-1990s, Australian linguist Robert Hoogenraad estimated that there were only about 700 people who could speak some Warumungu; by 2016, there were 320 speakers. Speakers have been shifting to Kriol since 2007. Today the Warumungu estimate their speaker population to be 700 and increasing.
"The post contact history of the Warumungu people is an unvarnished tale of the subordinaton of an Aboriginal society and its welfare to European interests... European settlement meant forced dispossession. This was not a once and for all process, but continued with the Warumungu being shunted around, right up to the 1960s, to accommodate various pastoral and mining interests."Maurice, M. Warumungu Land Claim. Report No.31. Report by the Aboriginal Land Commissioner, Mr Justice Maurice, to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and to the Administrator of the Northern Territory. Australian Government Publishing Service. Canberra, 1988
Tennant Creek is the urban centre of Warumungu country. During the 1970s, the era of Federal government self-determination policy, Aboriginal people began to move or return to Tennant Creek from and Warrabri Aboriginal settlement. In the face of opposition at their attempts to settle in the town, from authorities and European towns people, Aboriginal people began to establish organisations to gain representation, infrastructure and services for their community. Over the next decade a housing authority Warramunga Pabulu Housing Association (later Julali-kari Council), a health service Anyininginyi Congress and an office of the Central Land Council was opened. Today, Aboriginal people of the region have rights to country surrounding the town, claimed and recognised under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. The original land claim was lodged in 1978, for a decade the Warumungu fought for the return of their traditional lands. The ruling was made in 1988 and the hand back of the claim areas began soon after.The University of Melbourne School of Language and Linguistics (n.d.). Tennant Creek. Retrieved from http://languages-linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/research/past-acla1-regions
At the telegraph station to the south at Barrow Creek, conflict between the local Kaytetye people and Europeans broke out in the 1870s and lead to punitive expeditions, in which many Kaytetye, Warumungu, Anmatyerre, and Alyawarre and Warlpiri were killed. Conflict, largely over cattle, and resultant frontier violence occurred in many places in central Australia in the first 50 years of settlement, causing the displacement of Aboriginal people. In the early 1900s Alyawarre and Wakaya people fled violence at Hatches Creek and moved to Alexandria Station and other stations on the Barkly Tableland. Many moved later to Lake Nash. Eastern Warlpiri people fled after the Coniston massacre in 1928, many onto Warumungu country.
By the 1890s it is estimated that 100 people were living at camps around the Tennant Creek Telegraph Station, with some receiving rations, while some worked for the station. Many came to the site during the 1891-93 droughts, to the perennial waterholes along the creek, which Warumungu people traditionally used in drought years. An area of dry country to the east of the Telegraph Station was gazetted as a Warumungu Reserve in 1892, to be revoked in 1934 to allow mining in the area.
In the 1930s gold was discovered, starting a gold rush, which brought hopefuls from across the country. Aboriginal people worked on the mines, many of which were located on what had been the Warumungu Reserve. Tennant Creek town was established in 1934, at a site to the south of the Telegraph Station. It was off-limits to Aboriginal people until the 1960s. Warumungu and Alyawarre people also worked at mines in the Davenport Murchison Ranges, after wolframite was discovered at Hatcher's Creek in 1913. Many Aboriginal people spent substantial periods of their lives there and on neighbouring Kurandi Station, where in 1977 Aboriginal workers went on labour strike and staged a walk-off.
The life histories of most people include their experiences living on cattle stations, which eventually surrounded the original site of European settlement. Vast tracts of Warumungu country had been granted as and were stocked from the 1880s onwards. Running cattle on these lands was incompatible with Aboriginal hunting and gathering practices and people were forced to settle on stations or the reserve. Many men worked as stockmen, drovers, butchers and gardeners, while women carried out domestic work in the station houses. Payment was generally in rations only and conditions were generally very poor.
Country
In Norman Tindale's estimation, the Warumungu's lands once extended over some , from the northernmost reach at Mount Grayling (Renner Springs) southwards to the headwaters of the Gosse River. The eastern boundary was around Alroy Downs. The western limits ran to the sand plan 50 miles west of Tennant Creek.
History
In the 1870s, early white Exploration described the Warumungu as a flourishing nation. However, by 1915, invasion and reprisal had brought them to the brink of starvation. In 1934, a reserve that had been set aside for the Warumungu in 1892 was revoked in order to clear the way for gold prospecting. By the 1960s, the Warumungu had been entirely removed from their native land.
Native title
In 1978, the Central Land Council of the Northern Territory made a claim on behalf of the Warumungu under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act. A lengthy legal battle ensued, in which the litigations eventually went to the High Court of Australia. Fifteen years later, in 1993, most of the land claim was finally returned to the Warumungu. The Warumungu Land Claim is made up of ten separate parcels of land, which together make up . In March 1993, Michael Maurice, a former Aboriginal Land Commissioner, said of the ordeal:
Mythology
Wollunqua is the Warumungu people's version of the Rainbow Serpent, a creator being common to a number of Aboriginal creation stories.
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