Ualarai

The Ualarai were an indigenous Australian people of New South Wales.

Language

Ualarai was a Wiradhuric tongue It has been classified as a dialect (Yuwaalaraay)) of Gamilaraay by Robert M. W. Dixon.[1] The Ualarai distinguished various kinds of Gamilaraay, telling Mrs K. Langloh Parker:

"With us, Byamee the name is not derived from the verb to make-which is gimberleegoo; maker, gimberlah--this word is also used in the Kamilaroi tribes, some of which are within a hundred and fifty miles of us. But the Kamilaroi that Ridley knew are some three and four hundred miles away, so the language is sure to have variations; our Euahlayi language has only a few of the same words as the Kamilaroi.[2].

Country

Ualarai country was rather dry even over winter, which permitted a longer gathering and conservation of seeds as a food resource.[3]

Social organization

The Ualarai were organized in terms of matrilineal descent.[4]

Economy

The were proto-agriculturalists, who exploited the grasslands of their area, harvesting foods for storage, a practice (called generically konakandi or 'dung food')[lower-alpha 1] also found among several other tribes such as the Iliaura and Wadjari. The surplus was stored (yarmmara, storage) in caves, enabling women to free up their time, since the existence of reserves relieved them of the need to gather in edible foodstuffs every day.[6]

Both sexes worked at the harvest. The women would cull the grass heads with their ears, still green, so they could be stacked within a brushwood enclosure that was then set alight. The seeds were winnowed by stirring through the heap with long sticks, and gathered on opossum skins. Then the men took over as threshers, separating the husks by alternately beating and then stamping the seeds laid in two holes, on rectanglular the other circular. The refined product then underwent further purifying by employing wiri or bark dishes, and jubbil. The resulting seedstock was then packed in skin bags, Once taken out of storage, the seeds were prepared by grinding then, with additions of water, on dajuri millstones and cooking the cakes over ashes.[7] Milling was also done with a nether millstone, jamara,[lower-alpha 2] a word that also meant the milled seed itself.[4][8] Coolibah eucalypts yielded branches that were piled on hard ground and left to dry until they yielded up their seed which was then milled.[9]

Mythology

Reports on Aboriginal belief system often drove controversies over whether indigenous Australians understood the nature of conception or whether they recognized a supreme deity, one of the criteria for the kind of civilization Western colonialism promoted. Some maintained they did, in subscribing to a belief in Baiame. Andrew Lang asked Mrs Parker what the Ualarai view was in regard to this. She was told that their word for the 'All-Seeing Spirit' was Nurrulburu, and for the 'All-Hearing', Winnanulburu. As for Baiame, (Byamee) it meant a burul euray' (big man), one with totem names for every part of his body, down to each finger and toe. On his departure he distributed his totem attributes to all, which they would take from their mother, so that marriage was interdicted for people with the same mother (totem).[2][lower-alpha 3] He dwelt in his sky camp with his son Bailah Burrah.[10] he had an earthly subordinate Gayandi[lower-alpha 4] who was a ceremonial overseer to the mysteries of tribal initiation.[12]

Some words

Notes

  1. ↑ a Western desert tribal term, fron kona dung and kandi, vegetable, as opposed to koka(meats) -food.[5]
  2. ↑ Jamara was a word borrowed by diffusion from the Garrwa, who live 900 miles away to their north.[4]
  3. ↑ Ther source was a blind octogenarian, Yndda Dulleebah.[10]
  4. ↑ Cooresponding to the Daramulun among the Gamilaraay and the Wiradjuri [11]

Citations

References

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