Migration into and out of the Overlap Area
538 There was considerable evidence in the trial, and it is a widely held (but not unanimous) view of anthropologists that there has been a gradual south-easterly migration of the Yankunytjatjara/Antakarinja people and that, while this had been occurring before effective sovereignty, it accelerated thereafter. The evidence suggested that this migration had included movement into the Overlap Area and had prompted a southerly migration by the LSA. It also suggested a movement of the Arabana away from the Overlap Area.
539 The causes of the general south-easterly movement included drought, the degradation of food and water sources, the establishment of ration depots as sources of food, the effect of disease, the "attractions" of the European settlements and employment opportunities. I summarise some of the material below.
540 Lucas referred to newspaper reports in the 1880s of the displacement of Aboriginal peoples to places such as Mt Eba, Mt Vivian (well south of Oodnadatta) and to other pastoral stations. He also set out a passage from Gillen's letter to Spencer of 31 January 1896 which included:
[U]tter demoralization has set in amongst the Urrapunna and Arunta where they come together, they were, during the construction of the Railway, in the hands and under the influence of something like 1500 Navvies … Many of them died from typhoid and other diseases and now they are setting aside their ancient tribal laws and marrying anyhow.
541 Basedow in 1919 referred to influenza having "swept away" members of the Aboriginal population. As noted earlier, he described the disease as having "almost completely annihilated resident groups".
542 In his Report on the Administration of the Northern Territory for the year ended 30 June 1937, TGH Strehlow (then employed in the Northern Territory as a Patrol Officer) wrote:
The answer [to the significant depopulation of Aboriginal peoples] lies in the rapid and continuous drift of the natives from the Reserve within the last few years. One might be tempted to label it a flight or a rout rather than a mere drift. As a result of this general exodus Pitjentara [Pitjantjatjara] natives may be seen today in large camps wherever stations or doggers' camps dot the map in Central Australia. Middleton Ponds, Charlotte Waters, Hamilton Bore, to name only a few places, have long ceased to be Aranda or Loritja settlements, the original Aranda and Loritja folk are almost extinct, and today Pitjentara is the tongue which is spoken wherever natives gather together. Ernabella, Lind Vale and the Doggers' camps account for many more. Macumba and Oodnadatta have both seen Pitjentara beggars arriving in order to plead for tea and food … The total number of the derelict emigrants from the Reserve must run into many hundreds of men, women and children.
(Emphasis added)
543 Gara referred to other publications of TGH Strehlow in which he reported on the "drift" of Western Desert people eastward.
544 Elkin wrote in 1939:
The Aranda system [of kinship] belongs to Central rather than South Australia, just as the southern branch of the Aranda tribe does. Some of its local groups apparently spread down the Finke at some point time in the past, probably not very long ago. Just as the Dieri have a tradition of being pushed south to their present location by the Wongkonguru, and as, according to one of my Aluridja [Luritja] informants, the Aluridja people moving south, displaced a portion of the Arabana tribe from the Oodnadatta district, so in between these two movements of people, the Aranda spread down the Finke south of Horseshoe Bend and Charlotte Waters and so across into South Australia.
(Emphasis added)
545 In the same work, Elkin said:
By Aluridja tribes I mean all those tribes on the south and west of the Aranda inhabiting the country south-west of the Finke River, and almost all that part of South Australia west of the Port Augusta-Oodnadatta railway line … These Aluridja groups seem to have been migrating west and south and east in the far past, as they have been doing since the white settlement of South and Western Australia.
546 Doohan, in "One Family, Different Country" (1992), noted that no other researcher had corroborated Elkin's views on Arrernte movement southward. She pointed out, however, that there was "primary supporting evidence" and continued:
It is relevant here in that it directly relates to the number and disposition of the few remaining Lower Southern Arrernte. It also serves as an explanation for the fact that no one in the upper generations of my Arrernte genealogies is said to be primarily identified with the country around Macumba, a place said to be 'Arrernte country' and one at which many people, both Arrernte and Western Desert, lived.
547 In 1941, RM Berndt in "Tribal Migrations and Myths Centring on Ooldea, South Australia", said:
The natives here were then known as members of the 'Anta'kirinja tribe', although representatives of the Pitjandjara, Murunitja and Wirangu were present, members of these tribes have congregated here on the fringe of white occupation and away from their rightful countries.
(Emphasis added and footnote omitted)
548 Later, Berndt recorded:
Professor Elkin has mentioned that there have been movements of groups from north-west of South Australia, eastwards to the Fincke (sic) and Oodnadatta and southwards to the east-west transcontinental railway, so there was in process migration of natives from the far north-western corner and adjacent parts of Western Australia towards Laverton and Mount Margret in the latter State.
(Footnote omitted)
549 There were also several references in the evidence to the effects of drought, the drying up of waterholes and the lack of available food driving Aboriginal people towards the white settlements.
550 In 1966, Fay Gale published a paper entitled "Patterns of Post-European Aboriginal Migration in South Australia" based on the extensive field work which she undertook for her PhD dissertation. Gayle recorded:
Pitjintjitjira speakers of migrated south to Yalata and east to Oodnadatta and south-east to Port Augusta and Adelaide, and even to Gerard in the far east".
Gale published maps showing the migrations (which also indicated a movement of the Arabana towards Oodnadatta).
551 In their work entitled "An Aboriginal History of Oodnadatta Region" (1987), Shaw and Gibson said:
Among the most obvious signs of traditional life are the recollections of local myths, but as we now know the mythological knowledge held as second hand and fragmentary at best. It must still be reckoned with however because the Antakarinja, Aranda and Arabana descendants take their custodianship of the region seriously. One might argue that this originally was not traditional Antakarinja territory because there is both documentary (European) and oral (Aboriginal) evidence that the forefathers of many present day Oodnadatta residents gradually invaded the country from the west, forced by droughts and internecine conflicts. But this is not a complete picture. There was for instance a longstanding relationship between the Arabana and the Southern Aranda (they are more pronounced between the latter and the Wangkangurru) because their territories appear to have overlapped. Traditionally they were interconnected by the north-south trade route along which diffused raw materials, artefacts and ceremonial knowledge, and there was intermarriage between them. After the migrations, in succeeding generations there was intermarriage between members of the three main language groups Arabana, Southern Aranda and Antakarinja and with speakers of other Western Desert languages such as the Matutara and Pitjantjara. Sacred knowledge was transmitted by remnants of the Arabana to the Antakarinja and the Aranda. A lot of that sacred knowledge is held by a handful of elders, some of whom are quite old now …
(Emphasis added)
552 Hercus in "The Status of Women's Cultural Knowledge" (1989) said:
The worst blow for the status of women's cultural knowledge in the Lake Eyre Basin was the arrival from about 1900 onwards of large numbers of people of Western Desert origin, particularly Antikirinja on Anna Creek station, at Oodnadatta and Macumba, and of Kukata people on Stuart Creek station. Amongst these Western Desert people women had separate knowledge and separate sites, but the overall responsibility was male. Arabana women had not previously had the same need for separate sites, and so they found themselves altogether disinherited.
(Emphasis added)
553 Graham and Liebelt said that they had no reason to doubt this account of Hercus in relation to the broader region but were "not so sure … that it applies in any significant degree to the [Overlap Area]". It was not made clear why the Overlap Area was distinguished from the "broader region".
554 Later in "The Status of Women's Cultural Knowledge", Hercus said:
By the beginning of this Century Antikarinya people had begun to arrive in the Oodnadatta area: the late Yumpy Jack, born at the main Arabana Frog History site Uthapuka (Hookey's waterhole) in about 1900, claimed to have been the first Antikarinya baby to be born near Oodnadatta, where he took on the Frog Dreaming. Rapid changes followed …
Since Basedow's day Antikarinya people have gradually taken over the Oodnadatta area, and in the 1960s there were many of them even in the heartland of Arabana country at Anna Creek. Today there is not one single person of predominantly Arabana descent at Oodnadatta and only one at Anna Creek. The majority of the remaining Arabana people live outside their own traditional country at Marree and Port Augusta.
(Emphasis added)
555 In the report of the Finke Land Claim in 1990, Olney J recorded the finding of the anthropologists Vachon and Doohan who were assisting him that:
The Arrernte, their neighbours the Wangkanguru (to the east) and the Arapana (to the south), have fared very badly as a result of European contact. The number of Arrernte people has declined dramatically. Western Desert people have migrated east into Arrernte country and it is said that by the early 1950s, Western Desert people outnumbered the Arrernte in Arrernte land. At the time of writing the claim book (August 1986), the authors could identify only seven senior Arrernte traditional owners for all southern Arrernte lands, including the claim area. Arrernte people of all ages made up only one third of the total population of Finke, the rest were Western Desert or Luritja people.
556 Kim Doohan in "One Family, Different Country" in 1992 gave a detailed summary and description of migration and displacement in Central Australia. She stated:
The most significant of these migrations in terms of the repopulation of the eastern pastoral lands was the eastern movement of Western Desert people from around the turn the Century until about 1940. This immigration coincided closely with initial European settlement in the area and the severe decline of Lower Southern Arrernte and Antikarinyi numbers, primarily as a result of disease.
557 At page 13 of the same work, Doohan also recorded:
While non-Southern Aranda may not have 'come in' to assist their neighbours in fighting off the first intruders, forty or so years after first contact Western Desert people did migrate into Lower Southern Arrernte lands in large numbers. The offspring of many of these Western Desert people, along with those Lower Southern Arrernte who managed to survive, make up the present populations of Finke and Oodnadatta.
558 In her report, Stockigt gave linguistic support for the spread of Western Desert language having been relatively recent:
[32] The structural uniformity of Western Desert language within such a vast geographic area suggests that the language has spread over the region in comparatively recent times. Linguistic uniformity over large areas indicates recent spread, while a high degree of linguistic diversity internal to a region suggests that languages have been in location for longer periods of time …
559 In the face of Black's critique of her view that there had been an eastward movement of Western Desert people, Stockigt provided an extensive response in her second report. I did not understand that response to be challenged, and accept it.
560 The oft-repeated evidence that Yumpy Jack (Hughie Cullinan's uncle and Audrey Breadon's grandfather) had been the first Yankunytjatjara person born in the Overlap Area is a particularly important piece of evidence on this topic. It is also pertinent that that Yumpy Jack had been initiated as an Arabana man following his unwitting intrusion into an event of Arabana men's law.
561 Coupled with the migration of Western Desert and Arrernte people into the Oodnadatta region was the movement away from Oodnadatta of many Arabana. This seems to have been caused in part by the depredations of disease, especially the Spanish Flu in the early 1920s, the attraction of Anna Springs Station at which the Arabana seem to have been welcome, and the later establishment of Finniss Springs Station at the southern end of Lake Eyre by John Dunbar Warren in 1915 to which he had taken a number of Arabana. With respect to this movement, Lucas concluded his analysis of the population figures recorded by Basedow by saying that they suggested "a retreat of Arabana from the northern extent of their country, towards to the safety, rations and employment provided by the stations at Anna Creek, Stuart's Creek and Finniss Springs". Mr Strangways said that Finniss Springs Station had become the centre of the Arabana nation.
562 Lucas concluded:
[334] … In my opinion, Western Desert groups (variously identified as Luritja, Antikarinja and Yankunytjatjara) began moving into areas around and in the claim area in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and have continued to do so up to the present day.
Gara agreed with this assessment.
563 In his 2006 Report, Cane cautioned against the eastern and southern migration view. He noted that nomadism was a key to long term survival in the Western Desert and it was common for people to travel very substantial distances in any given year. Later, in the same Report, Cane said:
[463] Where else were people expected to go in hard times in the absence of other resources of equivalence in the area? Thus the notion of 'migration' to white settlement might be better seen as a Eurocentric characterisation of what was actually the maintenance of traditional patterns of residents in the face of European migration.
[464] There is a need, I believe, for interpretative caution in regard to the early migratory theory …
564 Cane concluded:
[528] The extent to which people left their traditional country and travelled to the cattle stations is difficult to tell from the historic record. That record suggests extensive nomadic travel between and around the waterholes and catchments of Alberga Creek and Neales Creek and between the Everard and Musgrave Ranges to the west (as climatic conditions allowed and necessitated) - as appears to have been the case in the precontact situation. I cannot identify a particular geographic orientation in that movement, and believe ethnographic accounts of an easterly migration of Aboriginal people to be a reflexive Eurocentric interpretation on traditional patterns of subsistence and social and ceremonial activity in the face of encroaching pastoral settlement (see section 5.3.4). My feeling is that regional nomadism and settlement in the historic era had more to do with custom and climate than cattlemen.
565 Cane and Liebelt repeated this paragraph in the Cane/Liebelt report.
566 In their first report, Graham and Liebelt adopted the same view, saying:
[138] … Our research indicates that while these movements applied to some degree to areas further to the south, ie, Anna Creek Station, in the Oodnadatta region the movement of 'eastern' Western Desert people would appear to be within country in which these groups were already subsisting within the pre-contact era (as Elkin found, also see Cane 2006 for analysis).
567 The research to which Graham and Liebelt referred in this paragraph is not clear. Later, however, they said that it was necessary to distinguish between the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara, at [174]. They suggested that it was the movement of the Pitjantjatjara which constituted the Western Desert movement to which the other anthropologists had referred and that the movement of the Yankunytjatjara had been within the "existing range" of Yankunytjatjara territory. Gara described this as a "novel argument". Based on the other evidence, this seemed a justified characterisation. Gara also noted at, [311], that Graham and Liebelt did not provide evidence for their distinction between the Pitjantjatjara and the Yankunytjatjara. They did, however, assert that Cane's 2006 Report found that "systematic historic investigation of long-distance movement in the eastern portions of the Great Victorian Desert throughout the twentieth century … was generally characteristic of desert oriented people's pre-contact subsistence and ceremonial cycles". They said that they agreed with Cane's view that "easterly migration periods in the Yankunytjatjara/Antakarinja claim area were oversimplifications (based on Eurocentric thinking) for traditional patterns of survival that exist both in response to drought and due to ritual maintenance and obligatory Law as part of religious Aboriginal life".
568 In their second report, Graham and Liebelt accepted that "in the early colonial period … displaced Aboriginal people from various linguistic groups [had begun] arriving in higher numbers into European settlements in the SA-NT region". They accepted that this included the arrival of people at Oodnadatta. They maintained, however, that these were not necessarily "outside the geographic range of the Aboriginal people", and pointed to evidence from JC Oastler concerning travel for trade purposes (for red ochre at Parachilna in the Flinders Ranges).
569 There is of course a distinction to be made between ingress into the country of another for the purposes of trade or ceremony, on the one hand, and occupation, on the other. There is, however, no reason to suppose that this obvious distinction has been overlooked by the entire body of anthropologists, ethnographers and historians. It was not overlooked by Mr Oastler, on whose letter Graham and Liebelt relied, who recognised that the "wild blacks from out west" were bound for Parachilna.
570 Moreover, as Gara pointed out, of the 19 families reviewed by Cane in the 2006 Report associated with the Yankunytjatjara/Antakarinja, only one family had an early (1850s-1870s) connection to Todmorden, and two other families had a connection to Oodnadatta during the 1880s-1910s. Most of the forebears of the other families had been living at Ernabella, Granite Mounds, Wallatinna, Wintinna and Welbourn Hill and other locations further west on the Reserve or even in Western Australia until the 1910s and 1920s at least. Gara considered that the Table in Cane's 2006 Report supported the movement of families to Oodnadatta in subsequent decades, i.e, as having commenced in the late 19th Century and as having accelerated in the 20th Century.
571 The analysis by Lucas of Cane's data was to the same effect.
572 Graham and Liebelt also suggested that migration and depopulation may have had the consequence of contracting "Arandic territories", i.e, that they were once more extensive in the south and west. They suggested that this was reflected in the early ethnographic-historical material. However, as I have not accepted their view of that material, the evidence does not warrant this conclusion.
573 In the oral evidence, Cane emphasised the difficulties for Aboriginal people in moving around country in times of extreme hot weather and drought, and the obvious attraction for them to remain near waterholes. He also emphasised that movement of people associated with ceremonies, some of which were substantial and took place over protracted periods. Cane accepted, however, that by the time of the substantial drought in 1915-16, Oodnadatta was attractive to Western Desert people by reason of its facilities, the availability of food and the degradation of the country brought about by pastoral activities. Nevertheless, he described the "big drivers" of population movement being ceremonies and drought rather than anything intrinsic about Oodnadatta.
574 Cane's evidence about the forced movement of peoples in time of drought as they sought sources of food and water accords with common sense and may be accepted. However, there is no reason to suppose that these nomadic or cyclical movements were overlooked by the early ethnographers. It is pertinent to my mind that they used the term "migration". This is a word with a well understood meaning, as referring to the permanent or long term settlement of people in another, or in another part of, a country, rather than something which is more transient or cyclical.
575 There were severe droughts in the Oodnadatta region in the first 30 years or so after effective sovereignty. There was an initial bad drought in the years 1875-1877 and a further drought from 1879-1882. A further severe drought, known as the Federation Drought, occurred between 1900 and 1903 and another drought between 1914-16. The lack of water and food on country during these droughts led many Aboriginal peoples to gather at the fringes of white settlements. Numerous ration depots were established by which the elderly or infirm could be fed. An early ration depot was at Strangways Springs. When in February 1879 the Police Trooper at the Peake requested a supply of rations and medicines "for the many destitute and infirm natives", his request was refused with the suggestion that the Trooper obtain the rations from Strangways Springs. In March 1882, the owner of Macumba Station made a similar request and that request was granted. The evidence did not disclose when a ration depot was established at the Peake but it was transferred to Oodnadatta when the police station was established there in about 1891. By 1894, there were ration depots at Anna Creek, Mount Lyndhurst, Oodnadatta, Strangways Springs, Stuart's Creek and Wood Duck Creek. It is fair to infer, and I do infer, that the availability of rations at these depots was an attraction for the Aboriginal Peoples who were otherwise without access to food.
576 While it may have been the case before the construction of the railway line that Western Desert people did return to their own countries once a drought had concluded, the overwhelming evidence is to the effect that that did not occur from about 1890s onwards. To this extent, I do not accept the evidence of Cane.
577 Graham and Liebelt advanced another theory. They believed it "just as likely that Arabana families will have developed historic attachments to the Oodnadatta region in the early colonial period, in the same manner that they have made attachments to areas in Marree in the post-contact period". On this theory, the Arabana too had migrated into the Overlap Area. Graham and Liebelt said that they found support for this view in the statement of Nursey-Bray in 2013 that:
The Arabana people are from the Lake Eyre region in South Australia. Due to colonisation, relocation, and missionisation, Arabana people are extremely dispersed with major populations living in Alice Springs, Oodnadatta, Marree, Adelaide, Coober Pedy and Port Augusta …
578 I do not accept this counter theory. The statement of Nursey-Bray cannot reasonably be regarded as supporting a post-effective sovereignty initial movement of Arabana into the Oodnadatta region. Nursey-Bray is more naturally to be understood as referring to the post-colonisation dispersal of the Arabana. The counter theory is inconsistent with the substantial body of detailed ethnographic-historical and anthropological evidence received in the trial to which I have already referred. If the alternative theory had been the reality, it is difficult to understand why it had not been documented more expressly. The Arabana may well have been attracted to Oodnadatta but it does not follow that they were moving into the country of another.
579 Dean Ah Chee also asserted that the Arabana had come up from the south, following the railway line as it was built. He claimed to have been told that by Nelly Stewart, Sydney Stewart, his father Freddy Ah Chee, Emily Churchill and Edie King. I am sceptical of that evidence and do not accept it. Even if Dean Ah Chee had been told those things, I do not accept it as reliable.
580 The evidence of the eastward and southward migrations of the Western Desert people, but also of Arrernte people, is generally consistent with the views of Lucas, Sackett, Stockigt and Gara that Oodnadatta and its immediate environs were within Arabana country at the time of effective sovereignty and accounts in large measure for the presence of the Walka Wani since that time. That does not preclude them having been present for other reasons, such as marriage, trade or ceremony, or in the exercise of use rights.