The Warumungu (or Warramunga) are a group of Indigenous Australians, many of whom speak Kriol or the Pama–Nyungan language of Warumungu.[1][2][3] They inhabit the region of Tennant Creek and Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia as well as small towns to the South.[1][4]
In the 1870s, early white explorers described the Warumungu as a flourishing nation.[5] However, by 1915, invasion and reprisal had brought them to the brink of starvation.[5][6] In 1934, a reserve that had been set aside for the Warumungu in 1892 was revoked in order to clear the way for gold prospecting.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.[5] 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. 15 years later, in 1993, most of the land claim was finally returned to the Warumungu.[5] The Warumungu Land Claim is currently made up of ten separate parcels of land, which together makes up 3,090 square kilometers.[7] In March 1993, Michael Maurice, a former Aboriginal Land Commissioner, said of the ordeal:
| “ | The problem with the Northern Territory Government then, was it didn't accept the underlying principles of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act. It didn't accept that it was for the Commonwealth to determine the conditions on which Aboriginal people could acquire land in the Northern Territory, so its attitude was one of resistance. | ” |
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—Michael Maurice, March 1993, [5] |
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Many Warumungu people continue to speak the Warumungu language (ISO 639-3: wrm[8][9]). The Warumungu language is a Pama–Nyungan language similar to the Warlpiri language spoken by the Warlpiri people. It is a suffixing language, in which verbs are formed by adding a tense suffix (although some verbs are formed by compounding a preverb).[6] As are many of the surviving Indigenous Australian languages, the Warumungu language is undergoing rapid change. The morphology used by younger speakers differs significantly than the one used by older speakers.[6] An example of a Warumungu sentence might be "apurtu im deya o warraku taun kana", meaning "Father's mother, is she there, in town, or not?".[10]
Warumungu is still classified as a living language,[11] but its number of speakers is decreasing quickly. In the mid-1950s, Australian surveyor Robert Hoogenraad estimated that there were only about 700 people who could speak some Warumungu;[4] by 1983, the population was estimated to be as small as 200 speakers.[1]