The Jadira are a people and territory in the

Pilbara The Pilbara () is a large, dry, thinly populated region in the north of Western Australia. It is known for its Aboriginal peoples; its ancient landscapes; the red earth; and its vast mineral deposits, in particular iron ore. It is also a glo ...

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 ...

. It was mentioned by

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 ...

in his classic ethnographic map of Australian tribes. The status of Jadira in the sense defined by Tindale has been recently questioned by Paul Burke.

Ascribed country

Tindale described the tribal boundaries of some of land belonging to a "Jadira" people, in the following terms.3,600 sq. The Jadira occupied the areas about the middle sections of the

Cane Cane or caning may refer to: *Walking stick or walking cane, a device used primarily to aid walking *Assistive cane, a walking stick used as a mobility aid for better balance *White cane, a mobility or safety device used by many people who are b ...

and

Robe A robe is a loose-fitting outer garment. Unlike garments described as capes or cloaks, robes usually have sleeves. The English word ''robe'' derives from Middle English ''robe'' ("garment"), borrowed from Old French ''robe'' ("booty, spoils" ...

rivers, running south of Mount Minnie, and as far north as the

Fortescue River The Fortescue River is an ephemeral river in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. It is the third longest river in the state. Course The river rises near Deadman Hill in the Ophthalmia Range about 30 km south of Newman. The river fl ...

. Their eastern frontier putatively fell short of the western scarp of the higher plateau of the

Hamersley Range The Hamersley Range is a mountainous region of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The range was named on 12 June 1861 by explorer Francis Thomas Gregory after Edward Hamersley (senior), Edward Hamersley, a prominent promoter of his explo ...

s. Tindale also added a list of alternative names for these Jadira: * ''Kawarindjari'', ''Kawarandjari'' * ''Kawarandari'' * ''Kawarindjara'' * ''Kauarind'arri, Kauarndhari'' * ''Garindjari'' These terms represented

Ngarluma The Ngarluma are an Indigenous Australian people of the western Pilbara area of northwest Australia. They are coastal dwellers of the area around Roebourne and Karratha. Not including Millstream. Language The Ngarluma language belongs to the ...

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, ...

a applied to the Jadira, and bore the sense of "belonging to the west". The only other information available to Tindale led him to suggest that some of the Jadira, a non-circumcising tribe, with the onset of European colonization, shifted eastwards to Ashburton Downs Station, while a second group moved to the mouth of the Fortescue River where they were assimilated into the Martuthinira. Traditionally, he added, their access to the coastal waters lay through

Nhuwala The Nhuwala are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Language Where Nhuwala language, Nhuwala fits into the classification of Australian Aboriginal languages has not yet been ascertained with absolute certaint ...

(which Tindale spelt Noala) territory, between the Cane and Robe rivers, a practice Tindale described as "trespassing".

Controversy

Aboriginal Legal Aid lawyer and Land Council lawyer Paul Burke re-examined Tindale's papers and sources when, with regard to a native title claim, he had to work out the precise boundaries for another tribe in this area. He came to the conclusion that the Jadira people and their territory were a misnomer, a phantom category, inexplicably created by Tindale on otherwise very thin evidence. The primary source for Tindale's thesis lies in a single reference to the ''Kau'arndhäri'' in a 1914 paper by Daisy Bates, where Bates names it as one of four western

tribes – the others being the Ngarluma, the

Kariera The Karieri people (alternatively Karimera; Gariera; Kaierra; Kariera; Karriara; Karriarra; or Kyreara) were an Indigenous Australian people of the Pilbara, who once lived around the coastal and inland area around and east of Port Hedland. Count ...

, and the Martuthinira – whose class system, governing marriages, is, she claimed, identical. Bates does not mention the Jadira, but Tindale drew the conclusion that it was the

endonym 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, ...

of the Kau'arndhäri, on the basis of a report by

Carl Georg von Brandenstein Carl-Georg Christoph Freiherr von Brandenstein (10 October 1909 – 8 January 2005) was a German linguist who took up the study of Australian Aboriginal languages. Life Born in 1909 in Hannover to , Carl-Georg finished high school in Weimar, an ...

, who glossed the latter term by the former.

Notes

Citations

Sources

* * * * * {{Aboriginal peoples of Western Australia Aboriginal peoples of Western Australia

Pilbara