Cultural practices |
Historically, many sites were used by Gunggari people for cultural purposes. This included ‘camp sites, burial sites, battle sites, waterholes and wells [and] artefact sites’ (GNTAC 2018c, para. 5) at locations now known as ‘Mitchell, Mungallala, Bonus Downs, Tongy, Tomoo, Abieglassie, Woodlands, Dunkeld, Teaswater, Amby, Womblebank, Forestvale, Morven, Albany Downs, Cashmere, Hillsborough, Lussvale, Cytheream, Thirsty Downs, Rockybank, Grassmere and Bindebango’ (GNTAC 2018c, para. 6) in Queensland. Later, fringe camps such as the Yumba became repositories for Gunggari cultural knowledge and lore (Kerkhove 2015, p. 7).
Although some aspects of Gunggari language and culture have been lost through colonisation and government policies of forced relocation and assimilation, Gunggari people still regularly practise and celebrate their culture today. For example, traditional Gunggari dancing and smoking ceremonies were performed at the 2018 Yumba Reunion event: |
(Own work)
Traditional dancing at the Yumba Reunion, 29 September 2018 |
(Own work)
Smoking ceremony at the Yumba Reunion, 29 September 2018 |
Several Gunggari artefacts were also formally repatriated at the reunion event, after 140 years of possession by a non-Aboriginal family (Hancock 2018). This act represents a genuine form of reconciliation, in which the beneficiaries of colonisation are voluntarily performing the labour required to reconcile the past – rather than expecting Aboriginal people to expend their time, energy and resources to achieve reconciliation.
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Few Gunggari language speakers remain today, but wordlists can be found in government records (State Library of Queensland 2017), as well as Gunggari-authored books (Mitchell Aboriginal Community 1985). The language is also passed down in some Gunggari families and taught at local schools by Gunggari people:
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(First Languages Australia 2018)
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(Gunggari Lesson n.d.)
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