The Wirngir are an

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 ...

people of the

Kimberley region The Kimberley is the northernmost of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy Desert, Great Sandy and Tanami Desert, Tanami deserts ...

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 ...

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 ...

estimated their territorial extension to range around . They were a coastal people, whose inland borders stopped in the highlands. They were present around Cape Bernier, as far southeast lower Lyne River and Vancouver Point. Their neighbours were the

Miriwung Miriwoong, also written Miriuwung and Miriwung, is an Aboriginal Australian language which today has fewer than 20 fluent speakers, most of whom live in or near Kununurra in Western Australia. All of the fluent speakers are elderly and the Mir ...

on their east and southeastern flank, the

Arnga The Arnga are an indigenous Australian people of the northern Kimberley region of Western Australia. Name The Arnga, like the Yeidji/Gwini and Miwa lack a self-defining tribal ethnonym, and for that reason have generally been called the Forrest ...

, south and southwest, and the

Yeidji The Yeidji, also spelt Yiiji and other variants, commonly known as Gwini/ Kwini, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Kimberley area of Western Australia, who also self-identify as Balanggarra. Name In contemporary accounts, the Yeidji ...

directly west of their northern boundary.

History of contact

The Wirngir, like other peoples in the area, were deeply affected by the

Forrest River massacre The Forrest River massacre, or Oombulgurri massacre of June 1926, was a massacre of Indigenous Australian people by a group of law enforcement personnel and civilians in the wake of the killing of a pastoralist in the Kimberley region of Wester ...

, which accounted for the disarray of their social organizations, according to the anthropologist

Phyllis Kaberry Phyllis Mary Kaberry (17 September 1910 – 31 October 1977) was a social anthropologist who dedicated her work to the study of women in various societies. Particularly with her work in both Australia and Africa, she paved the way for a femin ...

when she visited with the Lyne River peoples to study them in the mid-1930s.

Alternative names

* ''Wadaja'' * ''Walar.'' (a putative name for their language) * ''Winggir.'' (a name for Cape Dussejour) * ''Wular, Wola''

Notes

Citations

Sources

* * * * * {{Authority control Aboriginal peoples of Western Australia