The Mati Ke, also known as the Magatige, are an
Aboriginal Australian
Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands.
Humans first migrated to Australia 50,000 to 65,000 year ...
people, whose traditional lands are located in the
Wadeye area in the
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory (abbreviated as NT; known formally as the Northern Territory of Australia and informally as the Territory) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian internal territory in the central and central-northern regi ...
. Their language is in
serious danger of extinction, but there is a
language revival
Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community group ...
project under way to preserve it.
Language
Mati Ke, also known as Magati-Ge, Magadige, Marti Ke, Magati Gair, is classified as one of the
Western Daly languages
The Western Daly languages are a small family of Australian aboriginal languages that share common grammatical forms. They are:
*Western Daly
** Maranunggu (Emmi; Menhthe dialect)
** Marrithiyel (Bringen: Marri Ammu, Marritjevin, Marridan, M ...
, and bearing close affinities to Marringarr and
Marrithiyel. In 1983 around 30 fluent speakers of the language survived, and by the early 2000s, some 50 people were thought to still speak some of it as a second or third language.
By the early 2000s the last completely fluent speakers were reckoned to be three people, Johnny Chula, Patrick Nudjulu and his sister Agatha Perdjert, both of whom who moved back to a government-built outstation at Kuy on the Shores facing the
Timor Sea
The Timor Sea (, , or ) is a relatively shallow sea in the Indian Ocean bounded to the north by the island of Timor with Timor-Leste to the north, Indonesia to the northwest, Arafura Sea to the east, and to the south by Australia. The Sunda Tr ...
. Though living in close proximity to one another, they never spoke it together since in their social system communication between brother and sister after puberty was forbidden.
Social organization
The clan and totem system was described by the Norwegian ethnologist Johannes Falkenberg in 1962, based on fieldwork conducted in 1950.
History
The Mati Ke were one of several tribes living south of Wadeye between the
Moyle and
Fitzmaurice rivers. Many moved to Wadeye when a Catholic mission was set up there in the 1930s. Most descendants of the tribe dropped using their Mati Ke speech and adopted the majority language in the area,
Murrinh-Patha, which is spoken by about 2500 people and serves as a
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...
for several other ethnic groups.
Alternative names
* ''Maritige''
* ''Muringata''
* ''Muringa'' (
Murinbata exonym
An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...
)
* ''Muringe''
* ''Berinken, Berinkin, Berringin''
* ''Brinken, Brinkan''
Notes
Citations
Sources
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{{Authority control
Aboriginal peoples of the Northern Territory