Traditional lands of Australian Aboriginal Tribes around Derby

The Umiida, also written Umida and Umede, were 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 of the

Kimberley Kimberly or Kimberley may refer to: Places and historical events Australia Queensland * Kimberley, Queensland, a coastal locality in the Shire of Douglas South Australia * County of Kimberley, a cadastral unit in South Australia Ta ...

region of north

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

Language

The Umiida spoke one of the dialects of the (western)

Worrorra language Worrorra, also written Worora and other variants, and also known as Western Worrorran, is a moribund Australian Aboriginal language of northern Western Australia. It encompasses a number of dialects, which are spoken by a group of people known ...

. What little is known of it, and Ungarrangu, was taken down by Howard Coate in the 1960s.

Country

Norman Tindale Norman Barnett Tindale AO (12 October 1900 – 19 November 1993) was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist and ethnologist. He is best remembered for his work mapping the various tribal groupings of Aboriginal Australians ...

's estimate of their tribal domains assigns them , along the

Yampi Sound Yampi Sound is a part of the Indian Ocean off the coast of north-western Australia, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. It is located between King Sound and Collier Bay. It lies between the Yampi Peninsula and the islands of the Bucca ...

coastline and its inlets, as far south as Cone Bay. In a northerly direction, they possessed the islands from Koolan to Macleay. Their westward extension went as far as Bathurst Island, Bayliss Island, and those in Strickland Bay. Their inland domains went only as far as the watershed.

Social organization and life

The Umiida were a nomadic rafter people who harvested the maritime resources off the many islands in their area, together with the Djaui and Unggarranggu, tribes with whom they had amicable relations.

Mythology

Like other Worrorra neighbouring peoples the Umiida belonged to Wandjina/Wunggurr cultural complex where the Dreaming imagined both ''wandjina'', fresh-water creator beings who were custodians of key sites, and a common Worrorran

rainbow serpent The Rainbow Serpent or Rainbow Snake is a common deity often seen as the Creator deity, creator God, known by numerous names in different Australian Aboriginal languages by the many List of Australian Aboriginal group names, different Aborigina ...

''Wunggurr''.

History of contact

A number of the Umiida were removed to Beagle Bay and died there. People of part Umiida descent are known to live in Broome.

Alternative names

* ''Umeda, Umidi'' * ''Aobidai'' (Unggarranggu

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 ...

) * ''Umi:da'' * ''Oken'' * ''Okat'' * ''Okwata'' * ''Okata, Okada'' (an alternative Umiida

autonym Autonym may refer to: * Autonym, the name used by a person to refer to themselves or their language; see Exonym and endonym * Autonym (botany), an automatically created infrageneric or infraspecific name See also * Nominotypical subspecies, in zo ...

, used by the Unggarranggu for the language both shared)

References

Sources

* * * * * {{authority control Aboriginal peoples of Western Australia Kimberley (Western Australia)