Kaytetye

Kaytetye is the name of the language and of the Indigenous Australians who live around Barrow Creek and Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory. Their neighbours to the east are the Alyawarre, to the south the Anmatyerre, to the west the Warlpiri, and to the north the Warumungu. Kaytetye country is dissected by the Stuart Highway.

The Devils Marbles, which the Kaytetye call Karlu Karlu, are located on a sacred Dreaming site. The Kaytetye believe the boulders are the eggs of the rainbow serpent, who passed through the area in the Dreamtime.

The Kaytetye language, like many Indigenous languages in this part of Central Australia, is an Arandic language. Kaytetye language is considered to be a threatened language. A sophisticated form of sign language is also used by some Kaytetye.

The Kaytetye people have existed in this location for longer than outsiders have documented. It was in the 1870s that the Kaytetye would have first encountered Europeans. By the early 1870s, after John Stuart's party navigated the land for the installation of the Overland Telegraph, Kaytetye country and people were, and continue to be, affected by white settlers and their livestock. Pastoralism remains a key feature of Kaytetye country.

Unfortunately, the two cultures did not initially integrate peacefully, however after the 1890s Kaytetye confrontations with whites were rare. In 1874, European settlers stationed at the Barrow Creek telegraph station broke tribal laws, provoking an attack by some Kaytetye men. This sparked revenge killings of Kayetye by the settlers who had different understanding of 'the law'. Later, in the widely known Coniston massacre of 1928, a series of punitive raids occurred over a number of weeks as police parties killed indiscriminately. The retribution posse killed Kaytetye people, even though the Kaytetye were not part of the offending transgression.

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