Ngarkat

For other uses, see Ngarkat.

The Ngarkat is a recorded title of a tribal group from South Australia. The Ngarkat lands had linked the mallee peoples of Victoria and South Australia to the river peoples of the Murray River Murraylands. Ngarkat language has been loosely grouped with Peramangk language though not by linguists, and the grouping was perhaps partly owed to the co-ownership of lands in both the Ninety Mile Desert and Echunga by John Barton Hack, and partly to the occasional meeting of tribes. The language of the Ngarkat was recorded as being Boraipur by Ryan in recent times[1] though sources were not given, while it may yet be telling that the citing work concerns Mallee peoples to the east. The language may have been midway between that of mallee peoples to the east, and that of peoples to the west recorded by Teichelmann and Schurman.[2] It is known that songlines linked the Coorong to the Mallee regions,[3] hence went through Ngarkat land. It is also known that Ngarkat people did meet regularly with tribes to the east, at sites along the Murray.[4][5]

  1. ^ Ryan, Edward (26 September 2023). "Water for country, words for water". Water for country, words for water: Indigenous placenames of north-west Victoria and south-west New South Wales. ANU Press, in Indigenous and Minority Placenames: Australian and International Perspectives, Eds: Ian D. Clark, Luise Hercus, Laura Kostanski (2014). pp. 293–304. ISBN 9781925021622. JSTOR j.ctt13www5z.19 – via jstor.org. Open access icon
  2. ^ Teichelmann, C. G.; C. W. Schürmann (1840). Outlines of a grammar, vocabulary and phraseology of the Aboriginal language of South Australia spoken by the natives in and for some distance around Adelaide. Lutheran Missionary Society, Adelaide.
  3. ^ "Timeless Macedon (Macedon Ranges, Wurundjeri, Taungurrung & Dja Dja Wurrung Countries, VIC)". Back to Nature. Episode 4. 31 August 2021. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 1 October 2021.
  4. ^ Harris, C.R. (1982). A brief history of the Ninety Mile Desert. Nature Conservation Society of South Australia. ISBN 9780949751041. Retrieved 1 October 2021.
  5. ^ "Peramangk A Social History of the Aboriginal People of the Southern Mount Lofty Ranges (2011)" (PDF). Phasai at Deviantart. Retrieved 30 September 2021.