The Manbarra, otherwise known as the Wulgurukaba, are

Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Mainland Australia, Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the T ...

people, and the traditional custodians of the Palm Islands,

Magnetic Island Magnetic Island ( Wulguru: Yunbenun) is an island offshore from the city of Townsville, Queensland, Australia. This mountainous island in Cleveland Bay has effectively become a suburb of Townsville, with 2,335 permanent residents. The islan ...

, and an area of mainland

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

to the west of

Townsville Townsville is a city on the north-eastern coast of Queensland, Australia. With a population of 180,820 as of June 2018, it is the largest settlement in North Queensland; it is unofficially considered its capital. Estimated resident population, 30 ...

. The Manbarra people were forcibly moved off the Palm Islands in the 1890s by the

Queensland Government The Queensland Government is the democratic administrative authority of the Australian state of Queensland. The Government of Queensland, a parliamentary constitutional monarchy was formed in 1859 as prescribed in its Constitution, as amended f ...

, and hundreds of people drawn from many Aboriginal nations on the mainland were moved to an

Aboriginal reserve An Aboriginal reserve, also called simply reserve, was a government-sanctioned settlement for Aboriginal Australians, created under various state and federal legislation. Along with missions and other institutions, they were used from the 19th ce ...

on Great Palm Island in 1914, becoming the Bwgcolman people, who inhabit the island today.

Name

The name "Wulgurukaba" translates to "

canoe A canoe is a lightweight narrow water vessel, typically pointed at both ends and open on top, propelled by one or more seated or kneeling paddlers facing the direction of travel and using a single-bladed paddle. In British English, the term ...

people".

Language

Wulguru/Manbarra was one of two Nyawaygic languages and constitutes the fourth class of the Herbert River languages, according to

Robert M. W. Dixon Robert Malcolm Ward "Bob" Dixon (born 25 January 1939, in Gloucester, England) is a Professor of Linguistics in the College of Arts, Society, and Education and The Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Queensland. He is also Deputy Director o ...

. The surviving vocabulary of the Manbarra language, mainly collected by Ernest Gribble in 1932, indicates that it had a roughly 50% lexical overlap with

Nyawaygi The Nyawigi people, also spelt Nyawaygi, Nywaigi, or Nawagi, are an Aboriginal Australian people whose original country was around Halifax Bay in Far North Queensland. They may also have inhabited Orpheus Island. Language An early record sugges ...

. Little information was conserved regarding its grammatical structure. Another language was also spoken on the island, ''Buluguyban'' which was mutually intelligible with Manbarra, and may have been a dialect name, like Mulgu, Wulgurukaba, Coonambella, and Nhawalgaba.

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 ...

estimated the range of Wulgurukaba tribal territory at about , which covered both the islands off Townsville - including the Palm Islands] and Magnetic Island - and the hinterland west of Townsville to an extend of about (from the Ross River (Queensland), Ross River, eastwards nearly to Cape Cleveland.

History of contact

It is estimated that there were about 200 Manbarra people at the time of James Cook's visit in 1770. By the end of the 19th century they numbered about 50, apparently because many had left the island to go fishing for bêche-de-mer with Europeans. In 1909 the Queensland Chief

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 ...

visited the island, apparently to check on the activities of Japanese pearling crews in the area, and reported the existence of a small camp of Aboriginal people. Most Manbarra people were forcibly removed to the mainland in the 1890s. The last survivor of the Wulgurukaba band resident on Great Palm Island died in 1962.

Dreamtime mythology

The primordial creative serpent of the Manbarra

dreamtime The Dreaming, also referred to as Dreamtime, is a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal beliefs. It was originally used by Francis Gillen, quickly adopted by his col ...

legends, a carpet snake named ''Gubbal'', is said to have slithered down the

Herbert River The Herbert River is a river located in Far North Queensland, Australia. The southernmost of Queensland's wet tropics river systems, it was named in 1864 by George Elphinstone Dalrymple explorer, after Robert George Wyndham Herbert, the fi ...

, and, swimming across the sea, to have disintegrated, leaving pieces of his back as Palm Island and his head as

Recent events

Tambo (''Kukamunburra''), a Manbarra man was shipped by the showman R. A. Cunningham to the United States in 1883, in response to a call by P.T. Barnum for specimens of "savage races" to be put into a display in his traveling circus act. He died the following year in Ohio. His mummified remains were first put on exhibition in a

dime museum Dime museums were institutions that were popular at the end of the 19th century in the United States. Designed as centers for entertainment and moral education for the working class ( lowbrow), the museums were distinctly different from upper mi ...

and then stored in the basement of a Cleveland funeral parlour and were only discovered a century later when the business closed down. The Manbarra community appealed for the repatriation of his remains and they were duly restored to the people in 1994. His reburial there according to traditional funeral rites that had fallen into abeyance for decades played an important role in the cultural renewal and reconsolidation of Manbarra identity, and also that of the Bwgaman.

Native title

In July 2012, a six hectare section of Magnetic Island was granted to the Wulgurukaba people under freehold native title. The Queensland government also stated it would grant trusteeship of a further to the Wulgurukaba Yunbenun Aboriginal Corporation. The Manbarra have not been given legal status as traditional owners of the Palm Islands, as the people known as the Bwgcolman, drawn from over 40 tribes on the mainland and

Torres Strait Islands The Torres Strait Islands are a group of at least 274 small islands in the Torres Strait, a waterway separating far northern continental Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea. They span an area of , but their total land ...

, were forcibly moved to the Palm Island Aboriginal Settlement from 1918 onwards, and it is their descendants (the "historical people", who now inhabit the island.

Alternative names

* Buruku'man, Burugu'man (native

toponym Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' ( proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name o ...

for Great Palm Island) * Korambelbara (

Warakamai The Warrgamay people, also spelt Warakamai, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Queensland. Language Their language, Warrgamay, is now extinct. It was a variety of Dyirbalic, and appears to be composed of three distinct dialec ...

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, o ...

) * Mun-ba-rah

Notes

Citations

Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{authority control Aboriginal peoples of Queensland North Queensland