The Maduwongga (Martu Wangka) are 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 the Goldfields-Esperance region of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

Language

The language spoken by the Maduwongga was called

Kabal Kabal may refer to: * Kabal (earthworks), a desert fortification found in northern Kuwait used to house American military and coalition forces * Kabal Tehsil, a town in Pakistan * Kabal (Mortal Kombat), a character from the ''Mortal Kombat'' series ...

Country

Norman Tindale Norman Barnett Tindale AO (12 October 1900 – 19 November 1993) was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist and ethnologist. Life Tindale was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1900. His family moved to Tokyo and lived ther ...

's estimation, the Maduwongga tribal territory extended over some , ranging westwards from Pinjin on Lake Rebecca as far as

Mulline Mulline is an abandoned town located in the Goldfields-Esperance region in Western Australia. It is found between Kalgoorlie and Leonora in the Shire of Menzies. Gold was discovered in the area in the 1890s and following a gold rush to the ...

, including the area a few miles south of

Menzies Menzies is a Scottish surname, with Gaelic forms being Méinnearach and Méinn, and other variant forms being Menigees, Mennes, Mengzes, Menzeys, Mengies, and Minges. Derivation and history The name and its Gaelic form are probably derived f ...

, where their borders with the

Ngurlu The Ngurlu, also known as the Ngulutjara or Ngurlutjarra, are an Aboriginal Australian people of Western Australia. Country The Ngurlu lands, according to Tindale, extended over roughly from Menzies to Malcolm. Their northwestern frontier ran t ...

ran, over to

Kalgoorlie Kalgoorlie is a city in the Goldfields–Esperance region of Western Australia, located east-northeast of Perth at the end of the Great Eastern Highway. It is sometimes referred to as Kalgoorlie–Boulder, as the surrounding urban area includ ...

, Coolgardie, Kanowna, Kurnalpi, and

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...

. Ecologically they lived in country marked by mallee Eucalypt species.

History

According to oral traditions picked up by ethnographers, the Maduwongga may have moved in from an original homeland further east, and displaced the Kalamaia, westwards beyond Bullabulling.

Alternative names

* ''Jindi, Yindi.'' * ''Maduwonga.'' * ''Kabul.'' * ''Julbaritja'' (

exonym An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...

for them meaning 'southerners.').

Notes

Citations

Sources

* * * {{authority control Aboriginal peoples of Western Australia Goldfields-Esperance