Kaurareg

Kaurareg people
aka: Kaurarega, Kowrarega, Kauralaig, Kauraleg, Kororega, Korariga, Kauralaigna, Malulaig, Muralug (name of part of Prince of Wales Island), Kokkaiya (group on Yorke Island), Alkaiyana (people of "inside" Turtle Islands), Koiyana (people of "outside" islands), and Muralag (AIATSIS), nd (SIL)[1]

A map of the Torres Strait Islands, with the Kaurareg traditional country located in the middle band of islands
Hierarchy
Language family: Pama–Nyungan
Language branch: Mabuiag
Language group: Western Mabuiag
Group dialects: Kalaw Lagaw Ya[2]
Area
Bioregion: Cape York Peninsula
Location: Torres Strait Islands, Far North Queensland, Australia
Coordinates: 10°41′02″S 142°11′06″E / 10.684°S 142.185°E / -10.684; 142.185Coordinates: 10°41′02″S 142°11′06″E / 10.684°S 142.185°E / -10.684; 142.185
Islands:
Notable individuals

Kaurareg (alt. Kauraraiga) is the name for an indigenous Australian Torres Strait Island people. Historically they were, lower western islanders, based primarily on Muralag. Commanding an impressive outrigger technology they also conducted a nomadic life throughout the straits, fishing and trading with other Torres island groups, and venturing down to the Australian mainland of Cape York Peninsula, with several of whose tribes they held ceremonial, marriage and trading alliances. Subject to reprisals after being blamed for an incident in which a Western schooner and its crew were destroyed, their numbers rapidly diminished with the onset of white colonization and administration. After World War II, descendants of the Kaurareg began to return to their traditional islands, and lay claim to native title over several of them.

Language

The Kaurareg speak a dialect of Kalaw Lagaw Ya, either an isolate in the Pama–Nyungan family,[2] or a Papuan language with a notable Australian substratum.[3]

Torres Island Historical Context

The Kaurareg lie in the lower Western island group among the 5 basic ethno-culturally distinct groups that constituted the traditional world of the Torres Strait Islanders, the others being the Saibailgal (Top West islanders), the Maluilgal (Mid-West islanders), Kulkalgal (Central Islanders) and Meriam Le (Eastern Islanders).[4] Though internecine conflict was chronic in the region, it did not disrupt the dynamic interlocking trade system that linked all in a far-flung exchange system, whose goods extended beyond the islands to facilitate the flow of goods between New Guinea and the Cape York Peninsula.[5] The Kaurereg and the Mua traded bu (trumpet shells), alup (bailer shells) and wap(dugong harpoons) for Papuan canoes, cassowary bone-tipped daggers and arrows, and bamboo knives for beheading enemies (upi)..[6]

The Kaurareg in particular had close links with the tribes of northern Cape York, which was home to a number of Aboriginal groups. These were the Gudang whose territory extended from Cape York to Fly Point; the Gumakudin whose land was to the southwest of Cape York; the Unduyamo who were in the northern part of Newcastle Bay, and the Yadhaigana whose country went from Jackey Jackey Creek to Escape River.[7] A.C.Haddon, surveying the field reports of the ethnography to date, esp. the narratives collected by Gunnar Landtman, classified the Kaurareg as descendants of the ancient Hiamu people of the island of Daru off the southern Papuan coast. These Hiamu in turn, according to some legends, had come from Iama in the Bourke Isles. The Hiamu, it was said, were repeatedly worsted in encounters with Papuan groups, and abandoned Daru and moved to Muralag.[8][9]

History of Contact with Westerners

The HMS Pandora under Captain E.Edwards visited the island in 1791, seeking fresh water.[10][11] The Kaurareg people were extensively documented before their decimation and the destruction of their traditional life, by O. W. Brierly, an artist who took part in an Admiralty survey of the York Peninsula by the HMS Rattlesnake.He estimated the number of Kaurareg on Muralag alone asa around 100, though they were also spread over another 10 islands and islets.[12] In particular he took many notes based on interviews with Barbara Thompson, a castaway who, the lone survivor of a shipwreck off Ngurupai (Horn Island) in 1844, was cared for by the Kaurareg, who treated her as the marki (spirit) of an elder's deceased daughter (Giom) for 5 years until Owen Stanley's expedition retrieved her in 1849.[13] They were also the object of extensive research undertaken by Alfred Cort Haddon in 1888, and again in 1898 when he led the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Strait.

In mid April 1869 a schooner, the Sperwer while trading and trawling for trepang off Muralag, was attacked and its captain, James Gascoyne and his crew of 2 whites and 5 Malays were killed.[14] The incident occurred at Wednesday Spit between Wednesday Island and Hammond Island, an area where, it was later reported, the natives ‘had constantly maintained friendly intercourse‘[15] with Europeans. The pastoralist and district police magistrate in Somerset at that time, Frank Jardine, set out on a punitive expedition seconded by a Captain McAusland of the Melanie and his crew of kanakas. According to Jardine's son, the armed kanakas ran amok, and a great slaughter of Kaurareg on Muralag is thought to have taken place,[16] though some dispute the story of a massacre.[12] Jardine soon after went on leave, and Henry Chester who took over as the resident government administrator, took further measures against them. Misinformed that Gascoyne's wife and child were living with the Kaurareg, he had kidnapped a Kaurareg elder, Passdiwapod, as a pawn to ransom in exchange for the Gascoynes. The elder was released when the information proved to be false. The Gascoynes were in Melbourne.

In April 1870 Chester again set forth in the HMS Blanche with 25 royal marines and 8 aborigional troopers 5 recently released from St Helena's prison where they had served time for rape and armed robbery.[17] The site of the Muralag massacre was examined, 20 other islanders taken prisoners, one severely wounded, and all but two of their canoes burnt. This time the men turned out to be Kulkalaig from Nagir. Cape York Gudang aboriginals with Chester identified three Kulkalaig men as the culprits behind the Sperwer incident, and, on learning this, Chester had the three summarily executed. It is widely thought that the Kaurareg were indeed uninvolved, though the reprisal visited on them for it was responsible for their decimation.[18][19][20]

Kaurareg survivors were encountered in the 1880s at Yata (Port Lihou) and at Kiwain (Blue Fish Point) opposite Thursday Island, and at the close of the century their numbers were reduced to a hundred or so.[10] The remnants of the Kaurareg were then shifted to (Kiriri), other families were at Moa Island (Adam) and Puruma/Coconut Island. The Anglican Reverend Canon John Done, who had arrived as a missionary in 1915 and was much impressed by the Torres Islanders spirituality, noted in 1919 the 80 rermaining Kauraregs's desperate situation - the worst of all the islanders - and by 1920 they had been reduced to 67, after influenza swept the area.[21] In 1922 the Kaurareg were again moved at gunpoint to Moa island where they remained until 1947. In 1947 the elder Elikiam Tom insisted on returning to Kiriri, but, denied residence by the Catholic Mission because he refused to convert, he went over to Horn Island (Narupai) where, together with Kaurareg elders from Moa, the returnees built what became Wasaga village. The Department of Native Affairs tried to shift them to Red Island Point on the mainland, but they managed to resist further displacement.[22]

Traditional lands and practices

The Kaurareg distinguish at least six kinds of tide. Knowing where to hunt and fish, and in which kinds of currents, allows the Kaurareg access to a wide range of seafood. A strong ethic of sustainability means that over-hunting is punished. Kaurareg marine lore teaches "one can only fish successfully when one is hungry".[23]

The story of these people was featured in the SBS television program Living Black.[24] Kaurareg men were long-haired and went naked, save for as belt, while the women, apart from periods of mourning when it was removed, and replaced by a soger (long fringed skirt)[25] wore a leaf petticoat (zazi), and had closely cropped hair. Both septum piercing and wooden lobe plugs were customary. [26]

Death rites among the Kaurareg were apparently the same as those prevailing among the Mua people. Once the deceased's mari (spirit) left the body, the latter was laid on a sari (mortuary bier raised on four legs) and left until decomposition stripped the flesh from the bones,and the latter were rubbed with red, gathered within a bark sheath and buried in a sand mound surrounded by shells, skulls and dugong bones.[27]

United Isles of Kaiwalagal

In May 1996, the Kaurareg people lodged five native title claims over parts of the following islands:[28]

Administered by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the Torres Strait Regional Authority, the Kaurareg declared their independence from Australia in 2002,[29] after regaining native title over their ancestral land. They call their lands the United Isles of Kaiwalagal.[30]

Notes and references

Notes

  1. ↑ Dousset, Laurent (2005). "Kaurareg". AusAnthrop Australian Aboriginal tribal database. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
  2. 1 2 "Language information: Kala Lagaw Ya". Australian Indigenous Languages Database. AIATSIS. 26 June 2012. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
  3. ↑ Dixon 2002, p. 660.
  4. ↑ Shnukal 2001, pp. 23-24.
  5. ↑ Shnukal (1) 2008, p. 24.
  6. ↑ Shnukal (1) 2008, pp. 24-25.
  7. ↑ Greer, McIntyre & Henry 2011, p. 2.
  8. ↑ Haddon 2011, pp. 50-51.
  9. ↑ Shnukal 2008, p. 8.
  10. 1 2 Sharp 1992, p. 109.
  11. ↑ Sharp 1992, p. 105.
  12. 1 2 Sharp 1992, p. 29.
  13. ↑ Moore 1979, pp. 8-9.
  14. ↑ Carroll 1969, p. 40 n21.
  15. ↑ Carroll 1969, p. 37.
  16. ↑ Sharp 1992, pp. 71-71.
  17. ↑ Sharp 1992, pp. 71-72.
  18. ↑ Bowen & Bowen 2002, p. 149.
  19. ↑ Osborne 2009, p. 11.
  20. ↑ Moore 1979, pp. 12-13.
  21. ↑ Sharp 1992, p. 109-110.
  22. ↑ Southon & Elders 2014, p. 352.
  23. ↑ "Customary law and lore of the coast". Coastal and Marine Studies in Australia - Module 14. Marine Education Society of Australasia. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  24. ↑ Clarke, Allan. "Kaurareg". Living Black. SBS Television. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  25. ↑ Shnukal (1) 2008, p. 23.
  26. ↑ Shnukasl 2008, p. 9.
  27. ↑ Shnukal 2008, p. 23.
  28. ↑ The Kaurareg People's native title determinations: Questions and answers (PDF). National Native Title Tribunal. 2001. p. 1. ISBN 0 642 26208 X. Retrieved 22 December 2013.
  29. ↑ "Separatist moves in Torres Strait". Radio Australia. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 26 March 2012. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  30. ↑ "Kaurareg People Declare Independence from Australia". Cultural Survival, Inc. 2002. Retrieved 21 December 2013.

References

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