Yidiny people

Aboriginal Australian people of Far North Queensland

The Yidiny (also spelt Yidindj, Yidinji or Yidiñ),^[a] are an Aboriginal Australian people in Far North Queensland. Their language is the Yidiny language.

Language

The last fluent speakers of Yidiny were Tilly Fuller (d. October 1974), George Davis (b.1919), Dick Moses (b.1898) and his sister Ida Burnett of White Rock.^[1]^[2] A substantial part of the language has been analysed and recorded by Robert M. W. Dixon.^[3]

Country

The Yidiny lands were in lowland rainforest areas,^[4] stretching from Yarrabah down to the south, where their borders met those of the Ngajanji and the Mamu. To their north were the coastal Djabugay people. In Norman Tindale's calculation, the Yidiny tribal lands were estimated to cover some 400 square miles (1,000 km²). These included the areas of Deeral north to Gordonvale and Cairns. Their inland extension ran as far as Lake Barrine. Their eastern boundary was on the crest of the Prior Range.^[5]

Today, there are four traditional owner groups representing the peoples of the Cairns region. One of these groups represents the Yidinji clans, and comprises Gimuy Walubara Yidinji, Dulabed Malanbarra and Yidinji, Mandingalbay Yidinji and Wadjanbarra Tableland Yidinji.^[6]

History of contact

Colonisation

The Yidiny, along with many other tribal people in the tropical rainforest areas from Cairns to Ingham, and the Atherton Tableland were cleared off their land to enable the establishment of cattle stations and sugar cane plantations. Jack Kane participated in some massacres as a youth and recalled, in 1938 one episode alone in 1884, during a week-long campaign to round up the tribes, Queensland police and native troopers, encircled a Yidiny camp at what became known as Skull Pocket, several miles north of Yungaburra. At dawn, a shot was fired from one side into the camp to make them scatter, and then as they rushed into the ambushing forces elsewhere, were shot down. The native police then stabbed or smashed the brains of the children.^[7] One group of the Yidiny, broke off from the rest of the tribe in the early period of settlement, and after shifting to the area of the present-day Redlynch asserted a distinctive identity by calling themselves the Djumbandji. This segment took over a part of Buluwai territory.^[5]

Starting around 1910, even those who remained in the area of white settlement were the object of a Queensland Government policy of shifting them into the Anglican mission at Yarrabah on the Cape Grafton peninsula.^[8] As each tribe was weakened by dispersal and fragmentation, the elders formed a counter-plan in the 1920s to organise themselves into a more viable political unit, in the shape of a macro-tribe, but the merger failed to take hold, given the notable linguistic differences between groups.^[1]

Sovereignty

In 2014, 40 members of the Yidiny people, led by Murrumu Walubara Yidindji (formerly Jeremy Geia) renounced legal ties with Australia to form the Sovereign Yidindji Government, claiming sovereignty over the lands from south of Port Douglas to Cairns and the Atherton Tablelands.^[9]

Social organisation

The Yidiny were composed of several Clans, with Norman Tindale (1974) reporting five:^[5]

Gimuy
Walubara
Maiara
Maimbi
Djumbandji

Newer sources list eight:^[10]

Gimuy-walubarra Yidi (the traditional custodians of the area around and including the city of Cairns; Gimuy is the traditional name of the area)
Wadjanbarra Yidi
Bundabarra Yidi
Gulgibarra Yidi
Wujnur/Bindabarra Yidi
Mandigalpi Yidi
Badjabarra Yidi
Mallanbarra Yidi

Alternative names

Bolambi (from the personal name of one of the tribe's former leaders)
Charroogin
Djumbandji
Idi (abbreviated autonym)
Idin
Idinji
Itti
Jumbandjie^[5]
Maiara
Maimbi
Mulgrave River dialect (Archibald Meston)
Myarah^[11]
Yellingie
Yettingie
Yidin
Yidindji, Yidindyi

Notes

^ Though Yidin is often given, the language has a final palatal nasal, not dissimilar to the Spanish ñ (Dixon 2011, p. 211).

Citations

^ ^a ^b Dixon 2015, p. 315.
^ Dixon 1977, pp. 27–29.
^ Dixon 1977.
^ Tindale 1974, p. 123.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Tindale 1974, p. 168.
^ Wet Tropics Plan.
^ Bottoms 2013, pp. 217–218.
^ Dixon 2011, p. 209.
^ Howden 2021.
^ CRC: history & languages.
^ Gribble 1897, p. 84.

Sources

Bottoms, Timothy (2013). Conspiracy of Silence (PDF). Allen & Unwin. ISBN 978-1-743-31382-4.
Dixon, R. M. W. (1977). A Grammar of Yidin. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-21462-9.
Dixon, R. M. W. (1991). Words of Our Country: Stories, Place Names and Vocabulary in Yidiny, the Aboriginal language of the Cairns-Yarrabah region (PDF). University of Queensland Press. ISBN 0-7022-2360-3.
Dixon, R. M. W. (2011). Searching for Aboriginal Languages: Memoirs of a Field Worker. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-02504-1.
Dixon, R. M. W. (2015). Edible Gender, Mother-in-Law Style, and Other Grammatical Wonders: Studies in Dyirbal, Yidiñ, and Warrgamay. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-191-00742-2.
"First People's history & languages". Cairns Regional Council. Retrieved 8 September 2022.
Gribble, E. R. B. (31 March 1897). "Class systems. Class systems of the Goonganji,Myarah and Dungarah tribes, being tribes on Cape Grafton, Mulgrave River and lower Barron River". Australasian Anthropological Journal. 1 (4). Sydney: 84 – via Trove.
Howden, Saffron (2 November 2015). "Murrumu Walubara Yidindji renounces citizenship to reclaim Australia". The Age.
Howden, Saffron (5 July 2021). "Murrumu Walubara Yidindji renounces citizenship to reclaim Australia". The Age. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
"Local Traditional Owners From The Cairns Region, Far North Queensland". Wet Tropics Plan. Retrieved 5 July 2021.
Meston, Archibald (1889). Report of the government scientific expedition to Bellenden-ker Range. Brisbane: James Beal, Government Printer – via BHL.
Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Idindji (QLD)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University Press.