Kuringgai (also spelled Ku-ring-gai, Kuring-gai, Guringai, Kuriggai) (,) is an
ethnonym
An ethnonym () is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms (whose name of the ethnic group has been created by another group of people) and autonyms, or endonyms (whose name is created and used ...
referring to (a) an hypothesis regarding an aggregation of
Indigenous Australian
Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...
peoples occupying the territory between the southern borders of the
Gamilaraay and the area around Sydney (b) perhaps an historical people with its own distinctive language, located in part of that territory, or (c) people of Aboriginal origin who identify themselves as descending from the original peoples denoted by (a) or (b) and who call themselves Guringai.
Origins of the ethnonym
In 1892,
ethnologist
Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology) ...
John Fraser John Fraser may refer to:
Politics
*John Simon Frederick Fraser (1765–1803), commanded the Fraser Fencibles in Ireland and was (M.P.) for Inverness-shire
*John James Fraser (1829–1896), 5th Premier of the Canadian province of New Brunswick, 18 ...
edited and republished the work of
Lancelot Edward Threlkeld
Lancelot Edward Threlkeld (20 October 1788 – 10 October 1859) was an English missionary, primarily based in Australia. He was married twice and survived by sons and daughters from both marriages. Thelkeld is known for his work with Biraban i ...
on the language of the
Awabakal people, ''
An Australian Grammar
''An Australian grammar : comprehending the principles and natural rules of the language, as spoken by the Aborigines in the vicinity of Hunter's River, Lake Macquarie, &c. New South Wales'' is a book written by Lancelot Edward Threlkeld and publ ...
'', with lengthy additions. In his "Map of New South Wales as occupied by the native tribes" and text accompanying it, he deploys the term ''Kuringgai'' to refer to the people inhabiting a large stretch of the central coastline of New South Wales. He regarded the language described by Threlkeld as a dialect of a larger language, variations of which were spoken by many other tribes in New South Wales, and, in order to define this perceived language block he coined the word Kurriggai/Kuringgai:
we have now come to know that this dialect was essentially the same as that spoken by the sub-tribes occupying the land where Sydney now stands, and that they all formed parts of one great tribe, the Kuriggai.
Fraser lists a number of tribes to the north of his assumed Kuriggai language family: the Gamilaraay and their sub-tribes, the
Ualarai
The Yuwaalaraay, also spelt Euahlayi, Euayelai, Eualeyai, Ualarai, Yuwaaliyaay and Yuwallarai, are an Aboriginal Australian people of north-western New South Wales.
Name and language
The ethnonym derives from their word for "no" () to which ...
and
Weilwan. In the text accompanying his map, he states:
The next great tribe is the Kuringgai on the sea coast. Their ''taurai'' (hunting ground ''or'' territory) is known to extend north to the Macleay River, and I found that southwards it reached the Hawkesbury. then after, by examining the remains of the language of the natives about Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
and southwards, and by other tests, I assured myself that the country thereabout was occupied by sub-tribes of the Kurringgai.
Norman Tindale, in his 1974 classic survey of all known Australian tribes, was dismissive of Fraser's conjecture as "poor" in details, and "unquestionably the most inaccurate and garbled account ever published about the aborigines. Many of his tribal names were pure artifacts", each created to subsume under an invented label several different tribal identities: thus his fantasy of a ''Paikalyung'' crushed together 10 tribal units; his ''Yunggai'' nation throws together the
Anēwan,
Jukambal
The Jukambal were an indigenous Australian people located in northern New South Wales, Australia.
Name
The ethnonym Jukambal is form from the word ''juka'', meaning 'no'.
Country
The traditional lands of the Jukambal stretched over an estimated ...
and the
Kwiambal
The Kwiambal are an Aboriginal Australian people of New South Wales.
Name
The ethnonym is formed from their word for 'no', transcribed by early ethnographers as ''quie/koi'', and the suffix ''bal'', which denotes a tribal grouping.
Country
Norm ...
; his ''Wachigaru'' dissolves into one fictional unity the
Banbai
The Banbai are an Indigenous Australian people of New South Wales.
Language
Baanbai, which R. H. Mathews had treated as a distinct language, appears on closer analysis, according to W. G. Hoddinott, to have been a dialect of Gumbaiŋgar. if no ...
,
Gumbaynggirr,
Ngaku
The Ngaku were an Indigenous Australians, Australian Aboriginal tribe located around the Macleay River of New South Wales. They were a predominantly coastal people.
Although Ngako language, their language was not recorded, it was described as a dia ...
and some of the
Dunghutti. Even his acknowledgement of the Ualarai actually sweeps up 5 distinct aboriginal societies. Under his heading for the Awabakal, he writes:
the Awabakal are the central one of a series of tribes to which the arbitrary term Kuringgai has been applied by Fraser.
Where Fraser discerned one "nation", Tindale defined a conglomeration of distinct tribes such as the
Tharawal,
Eora
The Eora (''Yura'') are an Aboriginal Australian people of New South Wales. Eora is the name given by the earliest European settlers to a group of Aboriginal people belonging to the clans along the coastal area of what is now known as the Sy ...
,
Dharuk
The Dharug or Darug people, formerly known as the Broken Bay tribe, are an Aboriginal Australian people, who share strong ties of kinship and, in pre-colonial times, lived as skilled hunters in family groups or clans, scattered throughout much ...
,
Darkinjang,
Awabakal,
Worimi,
Wonnarua,
Birpai
The Birrbay people, also spelt Birpai, Biripi, Birippi and variant spellings, are an Aboriginal Australian people of New South Wales. They and share a dialect continuum with the Worimi people.
Language
The Gathang language (aka Gadjang or Wori ...
and
Ngamba
The Ngamba were an Australian Aboriginal people of New South Wales.
Language
The Ngamba language is poorly described because little has been transmitted of its nature. It is generally believed to have been similar to Gumbaynggirr.
Country
Ngamba ...
.
Arthur Capell, writing four years earlier, thought to the contrary that Kuringgai/Guriŋgai denoted some substantive historical reality, and was an appropriate name for the language spoken on the north side of Port Jackson northwards at least as far as
Tuggerah Lakes
The Tuggerah Lakes, a wetland system of three interconnected coastal lagoons, are located on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia and comprise Lake Munmorah, Budgewoi Lake and Tuggerah Lake.
History
The area around the Tuggerah L ...
. He concluded under the heading ''Karee/Kuringgai' that the reference is to:-
the language of the Pittwater people, and included the well-known Cammeraygal on the extreme south, along the northern shores of Port Jackson, and stretched as far north at least as Broken Bay. This is the basis for the statement above that the "Sydney" language did not cross Port Jackson
Val Attenbrow dismissed Capell's claim for an independent Guriŋgai, while Amanda Lissarrague and Jim Wafer reanalyzed the material and concluded the word denoted the "Hunter River-Lake Macquarie language", otherwise known as
Awabakal.
Geoff Ford in his thesis, "Darkiñung recognition : an analysis of the historiography for the Aborigines from the Hawkesbury-Hunter Ranges to the Northwest of Sydney (2010)" Chapters 8 & 9 in particular investigates the work of Threlkeld, Fraser, Matthews and others and determined that the Kuringgai were actually the "Wannungine". These were the same people that Thelkeld worked with and Fraser identified as Awabakal.
Notable people
*
Bungaree, a Broken Bay clan member who was selected by Governor
Lachlan Macquarie
Major-general (United Kingdom), Major General Lachlan Macquarie, Companion of the Order of the Bath, CB (; gd, Lachann MacGuaire; 31 January 1762 – 1 July 1824) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator from Scotland. Macquarie se ...
to be "king" of the Sydney "blacks". He was the first person to be referred to as an Australian. His direct descendants refer to themselves as GuriNgai people, despite the circulation of disinformation regarding the naming of the Language group. Attempts to erase the name from record fail because although the term was coined by Fazer, it uses the words for man (Guri) and woman (Ngai) from the language itself.
Today
The name invented by John Fraser still reverberates in a number of placenames and institutions in New South Wales.
*
Electoral district of Ku-ring-gai
Ku-ring-gai is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of New South Wales. Since 2015 it has been represented by Alister Henskens of the Liberal Party. The electorate covers the suburbs and parts of the subur ...
*
Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospital
Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospital is a hospital in Sydney, Australia, located on Palmerston Road in Hornsby. As a provider of care since 1933, the Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospital is a major metropolitan hospital, and is a teaching hospital of the Univer ...
*
Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park
Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park is a national park on the northern side of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia. The park is north of the Sydney central business district and generally comprises the land east of the M1 Pacific Motorway, sout ...
*
Ku-ring-gai High School
Ku-ring-gai High School (abbreviated as KHS), formerly Ku-ring-gai Creative Arts High School (1996–2016), is a government-funded co-educational comprehensive and specialist secondary day school with a speciality in creative and performing a ...
*
Ku-ring-gai Council
Ku-ring-gai Council is a local government area in Northern Sydney ( Upper North Shore), in the state of New South Wales, Australia. The area is named after the Guringai Aboriginal people who were thought to be the traditional owners of the area. ...
*
Mount Ku-ring-gai
* Kuring-gai College of Advanced Education, subsumed in 1989 as part of the
University of Technology, Sydney
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is a public research university located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Although its origins are said to trace back to the 1830s, the university was founded in its current form in 1988. As of 2021 ...
Notes
Citations
Sources
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Further reading
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{{Authority control
Aboriginal peoples of New South Wales