Dja Dja Wurrung
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 2,500 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Languages | |
| Dja Dja Wurrung, English | |
| Religion | |
| Australian Aboriginal mythology, Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
|
Boonerwrung, Taungurong, Wathaurong, Wurundjeri see List of Indigenous Australian group names |
Dja Dja Wurrung, also known as the Jaara people and Loddon River tribe, is a native Aboriginal tribe which occupied the watersheds of the Loddon and Avoca Rivers in the Bendigo region of central Victoria, Australia. They were part of the Kulin alliance of tribes. There were 16 clans, which adhered to a patrilineal system. Like the other Kulin peoples there were two moieties: Bunjil the eagle and Waa the crow.
The Dja Dja Wurrung were bound to their land by their spiritual belief system deriving from the Dreaming, when mythic beings had created the world, the people and their culture. They were part of established trade networks which allowed goods and information to flow over substantial distances. The Tachylite deposits near Spring Hill and the Coliban River may have been important trade goods as stone artefacts from this material have been found around Victoria.
There is evidence that smallpox swept through the Dja Dja Wurrung in 1789 and 1825, which would have decimated the population at the time. The epidemics were incorporated into aboriginal mythology as a giant snake, the Mindye, sent by Bunjil, to blow magic dust over people to punish them for being bad.
The trade networks would have carried news of the strange white men settling on the Eora land in the early 1790s and progressively invading peoples further west and south-west of Sydney. Thomas Mitchell was probably the first white man to be seen in Dja Dja Wurrung country when he explored and surveyed central Victoria in 1836, reporting he had found large fertile plains. The settlement of the Goulburn and Loddon Districts began the following year by squatters eager to carve out a station and run.
Munangabum was an influential clan head of the Liarga balug and Spiritual Leader or neyerneyemeet of the Djadja wurrung who lived through two smallpox epidemics and shaped his peoples response to European settlement in the 1830s and 1840s. On 7 February 1841 Munangabum was shot and wounded by settlers while his companion Gondiurmin died at Far Creek Station, west of Maryborough. Three settlers were later apprehended and tried on 18 May 1841 but were acquitted for want of evidence as aborigines could not give evidence in courts of law. He was murdered in 1846 by a rival clan-head from the south.
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