The Pila Nguru, often referred to in English as the Spinifex people, are an Aboriginal Australian people of Western Australia, whose lands extend to the border with South Australia and to the north of the Nullarbor Plain.[1][2] The centre of their homeland is in the Great Victoria Desert, at Tjuntjunjarra, some 700 kilometres (430 mi) east of Kalgoorlie,[3] perhaps the remotest community in Australia.[4] Their country is sometimes referred to as Spinifex country.[5] The Pila Nguru were the last Australian people to have dropped the complete trappings of their traditional lifestyle.[6]
They maintain in large part their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle within the territory,[7] over which their claims to native title in Australia and associated collective rights were recognised by a 28 November 2000 Federal Court decision. In 1997, an art project was started in which Indigenous paintings became part of the title claim. In 2005, a major exhibit of their works in London brought the artists widespread attention.[8]
- ^ Casey 2009, p. 138 n.9.
- ^ Loxley 2002.
- ^ Stephenson 2007, p. 139.
- ^ Chester 2013.
- ^ PTAC: history.
- ^ Castillo 2015, p. 72.
- ^ Middleton 2009, pp. 84–85.
- ^ Aiken 2005.