Kaurna

Kaurna

Ivaritji, a Kaurna elder and the last speaker of the Kaurna language (photographed 1928)
Regions with significant populations
South Australia
Languages
Kaurna language & Australian Aboriginal English

The Kaurna people (also called Coorna, Kaura, Gaurna) are an Indigenous Australian group who live in the Adelaide Plains area of South Australia. Early settlers called them the "Adelaide tribe". When the British came in 1836, much of the Kaurna culture and language was lost. But thanks to records made by early missionaries and researchers, people today are bringing back the Kaurna language and culture. The words "Kaurna meyunna" mean "Kaurna people."

Early settlers gave different names to the groups living in the Adelaide Plains and nearby areas. These names were based on places, like "Rapid Bay tribe" or "Willunga tribe." The Kaurna people did not have one name for all of themselves. Instead, family groups were named by where they lived, such as Kawanda Meyunna (North men) or Wirra Meyunna (Forest people).^[1]

The name Kaurna was first written down in 1879 ^[2] and became more common in the 1920s.^[3] It probably comes from a word used by nearby groups meaning "men" or "people."^[3]

Today, Kaurna meyunna meaning Kaurna people,^[4] is often said in greetings and special ceremonies to welcome people or show respect to the Kaurna people.^[5][6]

The Kaurna language is part of the Thura-Yura group of the Pama–Nyungan languages.^[7]. The first lists of Kaurna words were written down in 1826.^[8] Many early settlers wanted to learn the Kaurna language. William Williams and James Cronk were the first settlers to learn the language well and publish a list of Kaurna words in 1840.^[9]

When George Gawler became South Australia's third Governor in October 1838, he spoke to the local Indigenous people using a translator named William Wyatt. Wyatt was helped by Williams and Cronk. Gawler told settlers to learn Kaurna and use Kaurna names for places.^[10]

In October 1838, two German missionaries, Christian Teichelmann and Clamor Schürmann, came to South Australia on the same ship as Gawler. They started learning and writing down the Kaurna language right away. ^[11]In December 1839, they opened a school at Piltawodli, where children learned to read and write in Kaurna.

Teichelmann, Schürmann, and later Samuel Klose translated the Ten Commandments and some German hymns into Kaurna. Schürmann tried to teach the Kaurna people about Christianity and European ways.^[12] They did not finish translating the whole Bible, but they recorded over 2,000 Kaurna words. This was the biggest list of Kaurna words at that time and helped people bring back the language today.^[13]

The Kaurna people's land stretched from Cape Jervis at the bottom of the Fleurieu Peninsula to Port Wakefield on the east side of Gulf St Vincent. It went as far north as Crystal Brook in the Mid North. Clans lived near places like Snowtown, Blyth, Hoyleton, Hamley Bridge, Clarendon, Gawler and Myponga. The stringy bark forests behind the Mount Lofty Ranges were a border between the Kaurna and Peramangk people. Tunkalilla Beach, 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of Cape Jervis, was the border with the Ramindjeri people.

This is the most common idea of where Kaurna land was. But the Ramindjeri tribe says their land included the whole southern part of the Fleurieu Peninsula and Kangaroo Island, going as far north as Noarlunga^[14][15] or even the River Torrens.^[16] This overlaps with land claimed by the Kaurna and the Ngarrindjeri to the east. However, language evidence shows that the people Colonel Light met at Rapid Bay in 1836 spoke Kaurna.^[17]

In the 1930s, Ronald and Catherine Berndt studied the area and found six Ngarrindjeri clans living along the coast from Cape Jervis to just south of Adelaide. They thought these clans might have moved along trade routes as the Kaurna lost land to settlers.^[15]

The main Kaurna area was Tarndanyangga, meaning "red kangaroo place," near the River Torrens and its creeks. This area is now the center of Adelaide city. Kaurna people also lived in Burnside. An early settler in Beaumont said that at night you could see many Kaurna homes and fires along creeks and gullies. Sometimes 500 to 600 people camped in different places, like behind the Botanic Gardens by the river, near the Ranges, and at Waterfall Gully.^[18]

Although Governors Hindmarsh (1836–1838) and Gawler (1838–1841) were told to protect the Indigenous people and their property under British law, the settlers' needs were more important to them. Their plan to "civilize" and "protect" the Indigenous people assumed that the land would be peacefully given to the settlers. All the land was put up for sale and bought by settlers.^[19]

The Lutheran missionaries Christian Teichelmann and Clamor Schurmann learned about the Kaurna language and culture. They told the authorities that the Kaurna people owned their land through their fathers. Governor Gawler set aside some land for the Kaurna people, but settlers complained, and these lands were later sold or rented out. Within ten years, Europeans lived on all the Kaurna and Ramindjeri lands. Many wild animals disappeared because European gardening and farming changed the land. Grazing animals ate the plants that the Kaurna people used for food. The elders lost their power, and the Kaurna way of life was broken.^[19]

Before Europeans came, the Kaurna people may have been several thousand in number. But by 1836, when the colony was officially started, there were about 700 Kaurna left.^[20]

The first contact with Europeans began in the 1790s when sealers and whalers arrived. Sealers lived on Kangaroo Island from 1806 and took Kaurna women from the mainland. They wanted the women for sex and for work like removing the skin from seals.^[8] Because of this, the Kaurna were careful and stayed away from the first settlers.^[21] The timing helped avoid fighting because the Kaurna usually moved to the hills in summer, so the settlers arrived when the Kaurna were not in the plains.^[22]

When the British settlers came in 1836 with Governor John Hindmarsh, the Kaurna population was about 650.^[23] Their numbers had already dropped because of a smallpox disease that spread from the eastern states along the Murray River.^[24] This disease hurt their lives badly.^[2]

Later, typhoid spread because Europeans polluted the River Torrens, causing many deaths.^[24] The Kaurna also caught other diseases like measles, whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, and flu, which they had no natural protection against.

As groups mixed, the Kaurna and Ramindjeri people became very few.^[25] In the 1840s, people from the Murray River area invaded and took Kaurna women and children. The government stopped the Kaurna from defending themselves. Some Kaurna moved north to join other tribes.^[26]

The Colonisation Commissioners promised to protect the Aboriginal people and their property. They also said they would help with their food, education, and progress.^[2] To do this, they created the job of Protector of Aborigines. William Wyatt was first, then Matthew Moorhouse took the job from 1839 to 1856. In 1840, Moorhouse said many Kaurna people were friendly and helpful. By then, about 150 Kaurna could speak some English. Some Kaurna men, like Mullawirraburka ("King John") and Kadlitpinna ("Captain Jack"), helped the police and settlers. They also shared their language and culture with missionaries.^[27]

An early settler, George Brunskill, said the local Aboriginal people were peaceful, did not steal, and returned things they borrowed. Both the settlers and Aboriginal people were friendly at first. But as more settlers came, problems grew. Some settlers were drunk, violent, and took advantage of the Aboriginal people. They did not follow the give-and-take ways of Aboriginal culture, which caused bad feelings.^[28]

There were some violent events, like the Maria massacre, where shipwrecked people were killed. After this, fights and punishments became worse to protect settlers. Missionaries and protectors like Moorhouse and Edward John Eyre questioned using British laws on Aboriginal people. Moorhouse said police were often hostile to Aboriginal people. But Governor George Grey kept strict rules and even used martial law in places with little settler contact.^[29]

Moorhouse and Grey gave up trying to make Aboriginal people farmers and discouraged settlement at Pirltawardli. The "1847 Vagrancy Act" limited their freedom to move.^[30] Teichelmann tried to start a mission at Happy Valley to help the Kaurna farm, but he did not have enough resources. Many Kaurna worked for settlers and were respected, but the work was only seasonal and pay was low. Employers did not understand the Kaurna's family and community duties. Governor Grey began giving food rations to keep peace and encourage children to go to school.^[31]

By 1846, Moorhouse said almost whole tribes had disappeared.^[32] By the 1850s, few Kaurna were left near Adelaide. In 1850, children^[33]) from the Native School were moved to the Poonindie Native Training Institution, near Port Lincoln, on the Eyre Peninsula, over 600 kilometres (370 mi) away.^[34] Moorhouse left his job in 1856, and the Protector role was ended in 1857.^[35]

The Kaurna had to accept settler control faster than other groups. Most chose to live peacefully with settlers but did not accept the government’s "civilising" plans or missionary teachings. Because there were so few Kaurna by the 1850s, some joined nearby groups like the Narungga or Ngarrindjeri, and some women married settlers.

By 1860, there were many more settlers than Kaurna people. The settlers numbered about 117,727. Many Kaurna adults were moved from the city to places like Willunga, Point McLeay, and Point Pearce in the 1860s. In 1888, a German missionary said there were "almost none left."^[25] Some Kaurna people lived at Point McLeay and Point Pearce and married local families. Full-blood Kaurna still lived at missions and in scattered places in the late 1800s, even though many thought the "Adelaide tribe" was gone by the 1870s.^[36]

Food rations were still given out in Adelaide and other places. The Protector job was brought back in 1861, but the government did not help much with Aboriginal affairs. Instead, missionaries took care of them. A government report said the Aboriginal people were likely to disappear. Some Aboriginal people, including Kaurna, moved around and sometimes came to the city, camping in Botanic Park, which was then called the Police Paddocks. In 1874, 18 men and women were arrested as "vagrants" and sent away to Goolwa and Milang after 14 days in jail.^[37] Police and Aboriginal groups often had conflicts for many years.

Books about Adelaide’s history often do not mention the Aboriginal people. Every year, the Womadelaide festival is held in Botanic Park without remembering that Aboriginal people camped there 150 years ago. Aboriginal dances and ceremonies, called corroborees, have been done since the 1840s. Big corroborees happened at Adelaide Oval in 1885 and at beaches like Glenelg and Henley Beach around 1900. This missing history has been called "strategic forgetting" by an expert named W. E. H. Stanner.^[38]

The last full-blood Kaurna person was a woman named Ivaritji (Amelia Taylor or Amelia Savage^[39]). She died in 1929.^[40][a] (Tindale 1974, pp. 133, 213) She was born in Port Adelaide in the late 1840s. Her name means "gentle, misty rain" in the Kaurna language. Her father, Ityamai-itpina, known as "Rodney," was a Kaurna leader and well-known to early settlers.^[39] Ivaritji helped identify important Kaurna places in the city, like the lake in the Adelaide Botanic Garden and Victoria Square/Tarndanyangga. Whitmore Square is named after her to honor the Kaurna people who lived there before.^[41]

The Kaurna people were hunter-gatherers. They changed where they lived depending on the weather. In summer, they camped near coastal springs and fished for mulloway (a type of fish). In winter, they moved to the woodlands. They often used hollowed-out fallen redgum trees by creeks as shelters and added bark to make them bigger.^[42] Keeping their fires burning was very important and was the job of the older women. If the fire went out, it could be very dangerous. Sometimes, the Kaurna had to trade with other tribes they did not like, like the Ngaiawang and Nganguruku, to get firesticks. They traded things like cloaks, quartz flints, and red ochre.^[43]

One important custom was fire-stick farming. This means they lit small bushfires on purpose to help with hunting. The fires cleared scrub and helped grass grow, which attracted animals like emus and kangaroos.^[44] Early European settlers saw these fires before the Kaurna were moved away. The settlers did not like the fires because they could damage farms. Major Thomas O'Halloran said the Kaurna sometimes used fire to damage fences, survey markers, and scare animals. Because of these fires, the original stringybark forests in the foothills were mostly replaced by grassland by the time Europeans arrived. Since the late 1960s, rules to protect the foothills have helped native trees and bushes grow back to a natural state, which was different from how the land looked when Europeans first came.^[45]

Kaurna traditional items like spears, boomerangs, and nets are very rare today. People did not collect or save Kaurna culture much until the 1889 Paris Exhibition , which made people more interested in Indigenous culture. By then, the Kaurna traditional ways were mostly gone. Many objects were sent to the Paris Exhibition and were never returned to Australia.

The South Australian Museum has only 48 Kaurna items.^[when?] In September 2002, the Living Kaurna Cultural Centre opened at Warriparinga, in the southern suburbs of Adelaide, to help keep Kaurna culture alive.

The Kaurna people lived in family groups called bands. Each band lived in an area called a pangkarra. This land was passed from father to son when the son became an adult. Each pangkarra had land by the coast and land inland. The coast was important for fishing, and the inland land gave food, clothes, and shelter during bad weather. Several pangkarra together made a larger area called yerta.^[b]

All people in a band were related, so a man and woman from the same band could not marry. Bands were patrilineal and patrilocal, which means a woman moved to live with her husband's band after marriage. Each band had two groups called moieties: Karuru and Mattari. These groups came from a mother’s family line and were connected to a special animal or spirit. Children belonged to their mother’s moiety because they were thought to get their "flesh and blood" from their mother. People could not marry someone from the same moiety.^[46]

Girls could marry when they reached puberty, usually around 12 years old. Men could only marry after they were 25 years old.^[47]

Sexual relationships were free and open, even outside marriage. The Kaurna shared property as a group, and this included the idea that people’s bodies were shared too. So, cheating was common. Men from other tribes visiting was seen as a good way to mix families and keep the gene pool healthy. There was also a custom called milla mangkondi, or wife stealing , where men took women from other bands. Some women did not like this, but others saw it as a chance to pick their own partner and helped their favorite man. All Kaurna bands did this often.^[48]

We know very little about Kaurna rites and stories because early written records are few and incomplete. The Kaurna people practiced chest scarification (making cuts on the chest) and circumcision as part of their initiation ceremonies. They were the southernmost group to do this. Waterfall Gully is linked to these initiation rites.^[49]

Stories about Kaurna burial customs are not very clear because people thought any Kaurna gathering was for a funeral. When someone died, their body was wrapped in the clothes they wore in life. The body was placed on a wiralli, which is made of crossed sticks in a circle. Then, a meeting was held to find out how the person died. After that, the body was buried. Children under four years old were not buried right away. Instead, their bodies were wrapped and carried by their mothers during the day and used as pillows at night.^[50] Burials often happened near water, like sandy beaches, sand dunes, or riverbanks. Many graves have been found on Glenelg beach and at Port Noarlunga.^[51] One special grave at Kongaratti was rectangular and lined with slate stones. It had grass at the bottom, and an old woman was buried lying on her side, wrapped in a fishing net and kangaroo skin cloak. The grave was covered with grass and marine sponges.^[51]

The Kaurna have a story similar to the Peramangk people about a giant named Nganno (sometimes called Nunoo). The giant’s body is said to stretch 35 mi (56 km) from the Mount Lofty Ranges to Nuriootpa. He was killed there after attacking the Kaurna tribe. The two peaks of Mount Lofty and Mount Bonython are called jureidla, meaning his "two ears."^[52] There are other stories about these two mountains, including ones about two men and the two moiety groups of the Kaurna.^[53] These stories teach the importance of community and being unselfish to support the group.

A well-known legend is about a culture hero named Tjilbruke.^[54] This story is connected to places in Kaurna land. In one version, Tjilbruke is linked to the glossy ibis bird, but the name actually means the blue crane. The "Tjilbruke Dreaming Tracks" have been mapped from Bedford Park area (Warriparinga) down the Fleurieu Peninsula. People work to protect and honor these places.^[55]

Munaitjerlo is an ancestral being who made the Moon and stars before becoming the Sun. The word Munaitjerlo was also thought to mean the Kaurna Dreamtime, or their creation time. The Mura-Muras are other ancestral beings who made land features and gave laws and initiation ceremonies. Stories about the Mura-Muras are found in parts of Queensland, the Northern Territory, and South Australia. Since the Kaurna share Dreaming stories with these groups, they probably share the Mura-Muras stories too. The travels of Tjilbruke are especially well known from the research of Norman Tindale.^[51]

The Kaurna calendar is divided into four seasons, similar to summer, autumn, winter and spring:

• Warltati, the hot season, from January to March (warlta = hot, heat and warmth)
• Parnati, the windy season, from April to June (waitpi = windy)
• Kudlila, the wet season, from July to September (kudlinthi = to wash the earth)
• Wirltutu, the mild warm season, October to December (shown by the position of wirltu, the eagle's foot constellation, or Southern Cross, in the sky)

From the 1970s, many Kaurna elders and leaders worked to bring back their culture. They helped add Kaurna views to South Australia’s school lessons and created the Tjilbruke Dreaming Track and other projects. Some important people were Lewis O'Brien, Gladys Elphick, Alitya (Alice) Rigney, and Georgina Williams of the South Australian Museum. Much of the Aboriginal Studies lessons come from a book called The Kaurna People (1989).^[56] Many Kaurna people grew up at missions like Bukkiyana (Point Pearce) and Raukkan (Macleay), where they learned some Narungga and Ngarrindjeri culture. Over time, they started to bring back Kaurna skills and Dreaming stories.^[57]

The Kaurna Aboriginal Community and Heritage Association (KACHA) is the main group for all Kaurna people. It began as the Tjilbruke Track Committee at the South Australian Museum. Later, it became the Kaurna Heritage Committee and then KACHA. Now, it works on many issues, not just culture, including bringing back the Kaurna language and traditions.^[57] The Kaurna Yerta Aboriginal Corporation also represents Kaurna people. They helped create the Wangayarta memorial park and burial site in 2021.^[58]

There are at least two groups of Kaurna traditional dancers in South Australia:

• Taikurtinna, which means "family," started by Uncle Stevie Goldsmith^[59][60] and now led by his son Jamie.^[61][62][63]
• Kuma Karro, meaning "One Blood," started in 2008 by Jack Buckskin^[64][65][59]

Many places around Adelaide and the Fleurieu Peninsula have names that come from the Kaurna language. Examples include Cowandilla, Aldinga, Morialta and Munno Para. Some of these names were also the names of Kaurna family groups who lived there. Some place names are a mix of Kaurna and European words.^[66]

The Adelaide City Council started giving places two names in 1997.^[67] They gave each city square, park, and other important sites both their English name and a Kaurna name. This work was mostly done by 2003.^[68] In 2012, the council officially approved the new names for 39 places.^[69]

On 1 August 2019, the remains of 11 Kaurna people were laid to rest at a ceremony led by elder Jeffrey Newchurch at Kingston Park Coastal Reserve, south of Adelaide. John Carty, Head of Humanities at the South Australian Museum, said that the museum was "passionate" about working with the Kaurna people to return their ancestors, and would also be helping to educate the community about what it means to Aboriginal people. The Museum continues to receive further remains of Aboriginal people from overseas museums, in addition to the large amount of remains it already has. While many of these ancestral remains may be returned to Country by their families, who many of these people were is unknown. Due to the large number of remains which continues to grow and that many are unknown, a way to return these ancestors to Country, such as a memorial park, needed to be found.^[70] In 2021, a new 2 ha (4.9 acres) burial site was built in the cemetery to accommodate the returned remains of Kaurna people, called Wangayarta, in Evanston South. It was designed by a group that included elders Uncle Jeffrey Newchurch, Aunty Heather Agius, Uncle Major "Moogy" Sumner, and many others, and was supported by the Kaurna Yerta Aboriginal Corporation.^[71] The memorial site is in the shape of the Kaurna shield, to protect the ancestors now buried there.^[72] In November 2021, the South Australian Museum apologised to the Kaurna people for having held 4,600 Aboriginal remains over the past 165 years, and buried the first 100 remains of their ancestors at the site.^[72] A second round of burials took place in June 2022.^[73]

Jack Kanya Kudnuitya Buckskin (born around 1986),^[59] also known as Vincent Buckskin, is a Kaurna and Narungga man.^[74] He was named Young South Australian of the Year in 2011. Jack teaches the Kaurna language and culture.^[65]

His work began when he was 19 years old. After finishing Year 12 and starting university, he learned that his sister Mary, who had moved to Darwin, had died by suicide. Uncle Stevie Goldsmith invited Jack to join the Taikurtinna dance group to help him feel better. Jack first danced in public at Festival Plaza and appeared in a Bollywood movie called Love Story 2050.^[59]

In 2008, Jack started his own traditional dance group called Kuma Karro, which means "One Blood." The group has performed in Australia and other countries.^[64] Jack has also taught dance at Kaurna Plains School.^[65] Kuma Karro has grown into a center for many local Aboriginal cultural services.^[75] It employs 12 people who teach both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people about Aboriginal languages and cultures. They work with schools, South Australian Music Awards, Sydney Swans, and many others.^[76]

Jack has taught the Kaurna language at Warriparinga through the School of Languages, Salisbury High School, Kaurna Plains School, Le Fevre High School, and Adelaide High School. He works with Rob Amery on bringing back the Kaurna language at the University of Adelaide.^[64]

A documentary called *Buckskin*, made by Dylan River and Glynn McDonald, shows Jack’s work with his language and culture.^[77][78] It came out in 2013 and is available on SBS on Demand.^[79] In 2018, the City of Port Adelaide Enfield gave him an award.^[64]

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jack gave the Kaurna Welcome to Country for the online theatre series Decameron 2.0 and acted in a one-person play by Alexis West in the series.^{[80][81][82][83]}

As of 2023, Jack works at Tauondi Aboriginal College in Port Adelaide as a cultural adviser and mentor.^[74] He is often asked to perform Welcomes to Country. Jack and his partner Khesanh, whom he met at Salisbury High School, have three children who learn to speak Kaurna at home.^[59]

Stephen "Gadlabarti" Goldsmith, known as Uncle Stevie, was a respected Kaurna, Narungga, and Ngarrindjeri man.^[84] He died in July 2017. He worked at the Kaurna language revival centre at the University of Adelaide called Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi (KWP). He also gave advice to the South Australian Museum and the Art Gallery of South Australia. Goldsmith started and danced with the Taikurtinna group, which means "family." He was a skilled player of the yidaki (a traditional musical instrument). He was often asked to give Welcomes to Country at events like WOMADelaide and other WOMAD festivals overseas.^[60] He also acted on TV and stage, including in the Adelaide Festival show The Secret River, and appeared in many ads.^[62]

In 2017, Goldsmith was honored at the Lord Mayor of Adelaide's NAIDOC Awards and was named Male Elder of the Year. He was a fan of the Adelaide Crows AFL team, and after he died, the team wore black armbands at a game to remember him. Rob Amery, head of KWP, said Goldsmith was a great loss to the team because he was a role model, mentor, performer, cultural adviser, and more.^[85] In 2018, an award was created in his name called the Stevie Gadlabarti Goldsmith Memorial Award.^[86][87] Moogy Sumner won the first award,^[88] and Nici Cumpston, an Indigenous art curator, won it in 2019.^[89] "Uncle Stevie's Classroom" is still part of KidZone at WOMADelaide.^[84] A mural called "The Portrait of Stephen Goldsmith" was painted in 2018 on Wright Street in Adelaide by Jimmy C(James Cochran) and Elizabeth Close. Goldsmith’s son Jamie is also a well-known yidaki player and dancer with the Taikurtinna group. He has his own mural painted by Jimmy C in Frank’s Lane.^[62][63]

• Moogy Sumner is a respected Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna elder who mainly works to support Ngarrindjeri culture.
• Gladys Elphick (1904–1988), was the first president of the Council of Aboriginal Women of South Australia.
• Ivaritji (c.1849–1929) was probably the last full Kaurna person and the last known speaker of the Kaurna language before it was brought back.
• Lewis O'Brien (born 1930) is an elder and advocate.
• Alitya (Alice) Rigney (1942–2017) was a scholar and language expert.
• Georgina Williams helped a lot with the Tjilbruke Dreaming Track^[90][91][92] and was a finalist in the 2021 NAIDOC Awards.^[93]