Karajarri

The Karajarri are an Indigenous Australian people, who once lived southwest of the Kimberleys in the northern Pilbara, predominantly between the coastal area and the Great Sandy Desert. They now mostly reside at Bidyadanga, south of Broome. To their north lived the Yawuru people, to the east the Mangala, to the northeast the Nyigina, and to their south the Nyangumarta. Further down the coast were the Kariera.

The first description of the grammar of their language, Garadjeri, was published by Gerhardt Laves in 1931. It belongs to the Marngu branch of the Pama-Nyungan language family. The native conceptualization of its varieties recognizes 4 dialect forms, the Najanaja (or Murrkut) dialect spoken by coastal Karajarri, Nangu spoken in the central hinterlands and Nawurtu further east inland. Garadjeri has had a notable influence on the Yawuru language, many of whose terms for ceremonials, and for naming the indigenous flora and fauna, have been borrowed from the Karajarri. Less than 20 native speakers (2004) remain. Together with Nyangumarta, Karrajarri shows some features that are exceptional within the Kimberley Pama-Nyungan languages, in having bound pronominals affixed to inflecting verbs.

The Karajarri were divided into two distinct groups, those who inhabited the coastal areas, called Naja (Nadja), and the inlanders dwelling on the eastern plains and bushlands, the Nawutu (Naudu). The social hierarchy was headed by ritual leaders (pirrka, literally 'roots of a tree'), male elders who organized ceremonial life, and who are also responsible for management of the country and the general affairs of tribal members. Members of a Karajarri group were classified in four ways, panaka, purrungu, parrjari and karimpa, a tribal taxonomy that is determined by alternate generation levels distinguished along moiety lines called inara. Thus one inara, represented by the barn swallow (''wiyurr), is panaka-purrungu, being constituted by self, grandparents, sisters, brothers, cousins and grandchildren, together with marriageable partners and their siblings, the other, karimpa-parrjarri, is inclusive of one's mother, father, aunts, uncles, great grandparents and grandchildren, and is emblemized in terms of the fork-tailed swift (kitirr). Both the kitirr and wiyurr are viewed as heralds of rain.

...
Wikipedia