Ngunnawal people

Ngunnawal was the southern dialect of the Aboriginal Wallabalooa language of south-east Australia spoken in the now Yass District. The speakers possibly referred to themselves as the Ngunwal people, while European settlers called them the Yass Blacks. To better pursue native title claims, in 1996 with the active support of the Australian Capital Territory Government many Aboriginals living in the Territory came together to form the "New Tribe" of Ngunnawal people. However with the failure of the claims, the grouping split up and the Ngunnawal people are once again those referred to by early settlers as the Yass Blacks. With the growth of Canberra some Ngunnawal people now live in the territory of their traditional enemies, the Nyamudy people.

The description of the Ngunnawal country as given in Norman Tindale's Aboriginal Tribes of Australia (1974) was quite extensive, including south to Canberra. Due to the error by Tindall, the Ngunnwal were for a time incorrectly referred to as the original Aboriginal inhabitants by the ACT Government. However as stated by the South Australian Museum where his published description is archived (Collection AA338):

The information in the Catalog is reproduced from NB Tindale's Aboriginal Tribes of Australia (1974). Please be aware that much of the data relating to Aboriginal language group distribution and definition has undergone revision since 1974.

The latest significant research by such people as Koch (2011) shows that the Ngunnwal country was primarily the land surrounding the Yass River extending between Lake George to the east and the Murrumbidgee to the west, while the southern boundary of the Ngunnwal people was north of Canberra, approximately on a line from Gundaroo to Wee Jasper. This confirms that the Ngarigo/Ngarmal people were the original inhabitants of the Australian Capital Territory.

However as detailed in the 2013 genealogical report by Dr Natalie Knok to the ACT Government for their project "Our Kin Our Country", there has been growth in the number of "new tribes" in the context of claims to country and land management in the current legal context. An example is the use of the traditional Nganawal language to propose in 1996 the existence of the new tribe "Ngannwal" with a substantial county, including Canberra, Goulburn, Queanbeyan, Tumut and Yass. The report concluded that with "the paucity of the written record it may be assumed that the issue of which groups held traditional association over which areas will remain uncertain".

The Ngunnawal people (alternatively Ngunawal tribe) are some of the Indigenous Australian inhabitants whose traditional lands extended around Yass. When first encountered by European settlers in the 1820s, they were referred to as the Yass Blacks or Yass mob with a reputation for hostility. The Ngunnawal people were neighbours of the Nyamudy/Namadgi (who lived to the south on the Limestone Plains), Wiradjuri (to the west) and Gundungurra (to the north) peoples. However an alternative view is that Ngunnwal was not a tribe but the southern dialect of the Wallaballoa clan whose territory extended north from Yass to Baorowa.

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