It’s the 40th anniversary of the first contact with the Pintupi 9, regardless as the last group of aboriginal Australians to met with white people.

Up until the 1960s there were moderately frequent incidents of such “first contacts” in Western Australia. Indeed, most of the Pintupi people were brought to various settlements in the NT by the 1960s.
The only adult man in the group died a decade or so before the contact was made, and his two wives and seven children lived on, doing circuits of various waterholes around the northern Gibson desert.

In 1984 a bore was sunk at Kiwirrkurra to support a settlement that would allow Pintupi people to return to their native areas. This brought the Nine into contact with some of the returned Pintupi people and ultimately with Western civilisation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30500591

It’s a very interesting article, ta.

regarded, not regardless

The spearthrower they were carrying had a map of waterholes, similar to this one taken from another Pintupi group earlier.

dv said:

regarded, not regardless

The spearthrower they were carrying had a map of waterholes, similar to this one taken from another Pintupi group earlier.

Well that would have been very helpful.

Thanks for posting this, have sent the link to some friends. And the pic of the lovely spear thrower with its waterhole map.
I grieve for how much knowledge and culture was swept away in the great white land grab. There are tantalising glimpses of what was here and what was lost. This article adds to it.

ruby said:

Thanks for posting this, have sent the link to some friends. And the pic of the lovely spear thrower with its waterhole map.
I grieve for how much knowledge and culture was swept away in the great white land grab. There are tantalising glimpses of what was here and what was lost. This article adds to it.

So much was lost.

Did you see the article about the bending and shaping of trees?

roughbarked said:

ruby said:

Thanks for posting this, have sent the link to some friends. And the pic of the lovely spear thrower with its waterhole map.
I grieve for how much knowledge and culture was swept away in the great white land grab. There are tantalising glimpses of what was here and what was lost. This article adds to it.

So much was lost.

Did you see the article about the bending and shaping of trees?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-09/culturally-modified-trees-a-national-treasure-in-outback-nsw/104557536

>>Earlier in the year, the Pintupi community signed an agreement, external that turned 4.2 million hectares (16,200 sq miles) of their traditional land into an Indigenous Protected Area (IPA). The Kiwirrkurra IPA is now part of the largest protected zone of arid land on Earth. “We have been looking after country for thousands of years, and we still do so today,” the traditional owners declare, external. “We came back here because country is not healthy without us. We make it palya (good).”

“We came back here because country is not healthy without us. We make it palya (good).”

When native animals began going extinct in many parts of Inland Australia after the Aboriginal custodians were removed from their land to live in communities and missions, it was blamed largely on cats and foxes. However, the real reason was the absence of the people that managed the land and had been doing so for thousands of years.

Without them and firestick management the vegetation grew old and rank and restricted the growth of young edible plants until there was not enough for the animals to survive, even the insects that had fed off and pollinated the plants vanished or became too scarce for insectivorous animals to survive, and so most native animals in many vast inland areas just disappeared.