Yijarni
True stories from Gurindji country
On 23 August 1966, approximately 200 Gurindji stockmen and their families walked off Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory, protesting against poor working conditions and the taking of their land by pastoralists.
Led by Vincent Lingiari, this landmark action in 1966 precipitated the equal wages case in the pastoral industry and the establishment of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.
While it is well known that the Walk Off was driven by the poor treatment of Aboriginal workers, what is less well known is the previous decades of massacres and killings, stolen children and other abuses by early colonists.
Told in both English and Gurindji, these compelling and detailed oral accounts of the events that Gurindji elders either witnessed or heard from their parents and grandparents, will ignite the interest of audiences nationally and internationally and challenge revisionist historians who question the extent of frontier battles and the legitimacy of the Stolen Generations.
Production Details
- Paperback
- 275mm x 245mm x 15mm
- 256pp
- Released August 2016
- ISBN 9781925302028
Contents
Dedication
Contributors
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Before the Arrival of Europeans
Chapter 3: The Killing Times
Chapter 4: Malyalyimalyalyi/Lipanangku: The First Wave Hill Station
Chapter 5: Jinparrak- The Second Site for Wave Hill Station
Chapter 6: The Wave Hill Settlement
Chapter 7: Early Policemen and Trackers
Glossary of Gurindji and Kriol Words
Acknowledgments
Story Sources
Endnotes
References
Index
About The Author
Felicity Meakins is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow in Linguistics at the University of Queensland and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. She is a field linguist who specialises in the documentation of Australian Indigenous languages in the Victoria River District of the Northern Territory and the effect of English on Indigenous languages. She has worked as a community linguist as well as an academic over the past 20 years, facilitating language revitalisation programs, consulting on native title claims and conducting research into Indigenous languages. She has compiled a number of dictionaries and grammars of traditional Indigenous languages and has written numerous papers on language change in Australia.
About The Cover
Front cover image: Ronnie Wavehill at the remains of the yards at the site of the of the first Wave Hill Station. (Brenda L Croft 2015)
Back cover images: (Top) Women and children at the old station in 1925. (Photo: Michael Terry collection, courtesy of NLA); (Middle) Remians of the yards at the site of the original Wave Hill Station. (Photo: Brenda L Croft 2014.); (Bottom) Early encounters: Michael Terry and a man painted up ready to perform Wangka ceremony at the old station in 1925. (Photo: Michael Terry Collection, courtesy of NLA)