Bruny Island Tasmanian, or Nuenonne ("Nyunoni"), a name shared with
Southeast Tasmanian, is an
Aboriginal language or pair of languages of
Tasmania
)
, nickname =
, image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdi ...
in the reconstruction of
Claire Bowern
Claire Louise Bowern () is a linguist who works with Australian Indigenous languages. She is currently a professor of linguistics at Yale University, and has a secondary appointment in the department of anthropology at Yale.
Career
Bowern re ...
.
[Claire Bowern, September 2012, "The riddle of Tasmanian languages", ''Proc. R. Soc. B'', 279, 4590–4595, doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.1842] It was spoken on
Bruny Island
Bruny Island ( Nuenonne: Lunawanna-alonnah) is a island located off the south-eastern coast of Tasmania, Australia. The island is separated from the Tasmanian mainland by the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, and its east coast lies within the Tasman S ...
, off the southeastern coast of Tasmania, by the Bruny tribe.
Bruny Island Tasmanian is attested in a list of 986 words collected by Joseph Milligan (published 1857 & 1859); in 515 words collected by
George Augustus Robinson
George Augustus Robinson (22 March 1791 – 18 October 1866) was a British-born colonial official and self-trained preacher in colonial Australia. In 1824, Robinson travelled to Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land, where he attempted to negotiate ...
; in 273 words from Charles Sterling; and in 111 words from R.A. Roberts (published 1828). The Milligan vocabulary is divergent, and falls out as a distinct language when the lists are compared at p < 0.15, though it falls together with the rest of the island at a looser criterion of p < 0.20.
"Running text"
The following is a sermon which
George Augustus Robinson
George Augustus Robinson (22 March 1791 – 18 October 1866) was a British-born colonial official and self-trained preacher in colonial Australia. In 1824, Robinson travelled to Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land, where he attempted to negotiate ...
preached to the aboriginals on Bruny Island after having stayed there for eight weeks. The first line is Robinson's transcription, followed by a reconstruction of what sounds Robinson was trying to represent, and finally an English gloss.
This is the only "running text" ever recorded for any of the Tasmanian languages. This sermon is really English replaced word-for-word with Bruny Island words stripped of their grammar, so is not a good indicator of what Bruny Island grammar was like.
History
The last speaker of Bruny Island was likely
Truganini
Truganini (also known as Lallah Rookh; c. 1812 – 8 May 1876) was an Aboriginal Tasmanian woman. She was one of the last native speakers of the Tasmanian languages and one of the last individuals solely of Aboriginal Tasmanian descent.
Trug ...
, who is also widely accepted as the last full-blooded
Tasmanian Aboriginal person. She was a daughter of Mangana, Chief of the Bruny Island people. Her name was the word her tribe used to describe the
grey saltbush ''Atriplex cinerea''.
In her youth, she took part in her people's traditional culture, but Aboriginal life was disrupted by European invasion.
When Lieutenant-Governor
George Arthur
Sir George Arthur, 1st Baronet (21 June 1784 – 19 September 1854) was Lieutenant Governor of British Honduras from 1814 to 1822 and of Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania) from 1823 to 1836. The campaign against Aboriginal Tasmania ...
arrived in Van Diemen's Land in 1824, he implemented two policies to deal with the growing conflict between settlers and the Aboriginal peoples. First, bounties were awarded for the capture of Aboriginal adults and children, and secondly an effort was made to establish friendly relations with Aboriginal Peoples in order to lure them into camps. The campaign began on Bruny Island, where there had been fewer hostilities than in other parts of Tasmania.
![Truganini and last 4 tasmanian aborigines](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Truganini_and_last_4_tasmanian_aborigines.jpg)
When Truganini met
George Augustus Robinson
George Augustus Robinson (22 March 1791 – 18 October 1866) was a British-born colonial official and self-trained preacher in colonial Australia. In 1824, Robinson travelled to Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land, where he attempted to negotiate ...
, the
Protector of Aborigines
The role of Protector of Aborigines was first established in South Australia in 1836.
The role became established in other parts of Australia pursuant to a recommendation contained in the ''Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Abori ...
, in 1829, her mother had been killed by sailors, her uncle shot by a soldier, her sister abducted by sealers, and her fiancé brutally murdered by timber-getters, who then repeatedly sexually abused her. In 1830, Robinson, moved Truganini and Woorrady to
Flinders Island
Flinders Island, the largest island in the Furneaux Group, is a island in the Bass Strait, northeast of the island of Tasmania. Flinders Island was the place where the last remnants of aboriginal Tasmanian population were exiled by the colon ...
with the last surviving Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples, numbering approximately 100. The stated aim of isolation was to save them, but many of the group died from
influenza
Influenza, commonly known as "the flu", is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptoms ...
and other diseases. Truganini also helped Robinson with a settlement for mainland Aboriginal People at
Port Phillip
Port Phillip (Kulin languages, Kulin: ''Narm-Narm'') or Port Phillip Bay is a horsehead-shaped bay#Types, enclosed bay on the central coast of southern Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. The bay opens into the Bass Strait via a short, ...
in 1838.
After about two years of living in and around Melbourne, she joined
Tunnerminnerwait
Tunnerminnerwait (c.1812–1842) was an Australian Aboriginal resistance fighter and Parperloihener clansman from Tasmania. He was also known by several other names including Peevay, Jack of Cape Grim, Tunninerpareway and renamed Jack Napoleon Ta ...
and three other Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples as
outlaw
An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so that anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them ...
s, robbing and shooting at settlers around
Dandenong
Dandenong is a southeastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, about from the Melbourne CBD. It is the council seat of the City of Greater Dandenong local government area, with a recorded population of 30,127 at the . Situated mainly ...
and starting a long pursuit by the authorities. They headed to
Bass River and then
Cape Paterson
Cape Paterson () is a cape and seaside village located near the town of Wonthaggi, south-east of Melbourne via the South Gippsland and Bass Highways, in the Bass Coast Shire of Gippsland, Victoria, Australia. Known originally for the disc ...
. There, members of their group murdered two whalers at Watsons hut. The group was captured and sent for trial for murder at Port Phillip. A gunshot wound to Truganini's head was treated by Dr. Hugh Anderson of Bass River. The two men of the group were found guilty and hanged on 20 January 1842. Truganini and most of the other Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples were returned to Flinders Island several months later.
In 1856, the few surviving Tasmanian Aboriginal people on Flinders Island, including Truganini, were moved to a settlement at
Oyster Cove, south of
Hobart
Hobart ( ; Nuennonne/Palawa kani: ''nipaluna'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-small ...
.
[According to ''The Times'' newspaper, quoting a report issued by the Colonial Office, by 1861 the number of survivors at Oyster Cove was then 14:"...14 persons, all adults, aboriginal people of Tasmania, who are the sole surviving remnant of ten tribes. Nine of these persons are women and five are men. There are among them four married couples, and four of the men and five of the women are under 45 years of age, but no children have been born to them for years. It is considered difficult to account for this...Besides these 14 persons there is a native woman who is married to a white man, and who has a son, a fine healthy-looking child..." The article, headed ‘Decay of Race’, adds that though the survivors enjoyed generally good health and still made hunting trips to the bush during the season (after first asking "leave to go"), they were now "fed, housed and clothed at public expense" and "much addicted to drinking". ''The Times'', Tuesday, 5 Feb 1861; pg. 10; Issue 23848; col A]
References
{{Southern Tasmania , state=autocollapse
Eastern Tasmanian languages
Bruny Island
Languages extinct in the 1870s