The Biyaygiri, also known as Bandjin, were an
Aboriginal Australian
Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Islands ...
people of northern
Queensland
)
, nickname = Sunshine State
, image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, established_ ...
.
Language
The language of the Biyaygiri was
Biyay, a dialect of
Warrgamay
The Warrgamay people, also spelt Warakamai, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Queensland.
Language
Their language, Warrgamay, is now extinct. It was a variety of Dyirbalic, and appears to be composed of three distinct dialec ...
. The last speaker of the language was Nora Boyd, who enabled
Robert Dixon to supplement what little was known of the dialect before dying at age 95.
Country
The Biyaygiri were the
Indigenous people
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
of
Hinchinbrook Island
Hinchinbrook Island (or Pouandai to the Biyaygiri people) is an island in the Cassowary Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. It lies east of Cardwell and north of Lucinda, separated from the north-eastern coast of Queensland by the narrow Hi ...
, with a continental foothold on the area around
Lucinda Point. Norman Tindale estimated their lands as encompassing about .
Social organisation
Some uncertainty exists as to whether the Biyay speakers on Hinchinbrook and the Lucinda Point were the same tribe. The latter called themselves ''Biaigin'', and may have been tribally distinct. Those on Hinchinbrook had a four-class marriage system:
* ''Koorkeela''
* ''Kookooroo''
* ''Woongo''
* ''Wooitcheroo''
Biyaygiri furnished some of the major trade goods of the continental area adjacent to their island, and among those mainland tribes the
Nautilus necklaces, and
Melo shells they collected and worked came to be known by one of the Hinchinbrook tribal ethnonyms, ''bandjin''.
History of contact
Hinchenbrook Island was first occupied by whites around 1863. The island was ethnically cleansed just under a decade later. Robert Dixon writes that an initial attempt to established a mission, where the Biyaygiri might have found some protection, was undertaken by the Reverend E. Fuller in 1870, but his sojourn in the area lasted only five months, during which the Biyaygiri kept their distance.
In retrospect, the Biyaygiri might have done well to seek his protection. In 1872, Sub-Inspector Robert Johnstone - who was convinced that there was only one real way to "teach the Aborigines a lesson" - led a party of police and troopers who beat a cordon across the island and cornered almost the whole tribe on a headland. Those who were not massacred on land were shot as they attempted to swim away.'
A slightly different version is provided by newspapers of the period. Fuller's mission was undertaken in 1874, two years later than Johnstone's cleansing of the area with the assistance of the
Australian native police
Australian native police units, consisting of Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal troopers under the command (usually) of at least one white officer, existed in various forms in all Australian mainland colonies during the nineteenth and, in some ...
. The Biyaygiri had been decimated before Fuller's arrival and he spent 3 weeks trying to turn up Aboriginal people on the island without finding a single native person there.
Alternative names
* ''Bandji.'' (incorrect)
* ''Bandyin, Banjin''
* ''Biaigiri''
* ''Bijai.'' (language name)
* ''Bundjin''
* ''Kunyin''
* ''Uradig''
Source:
Some words
* ''kooin.'' (white man)
* ''tonga.'' (father)
* ''wooyou.'' (tame dog)
* ''yappo.'' (mother)
Source:
Notes
Citations
Sources
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{{authority control
Aboriginal peoples of Queensland
Far North Queensland