Waanyi

The Waanyi people are an Indigenous Australian people south of the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland who live in the vicinity of the south of the upper Nicholson River south of the Garrwa people, west of the Injilarija and Nguburinji tribes, and east of the Wambaya and Wakaya tribes.

The Waanyi language now moribund had some 10 speakers in 1981, mainly to the west of Doomadgee. It is classified as one of the Garrwan languages.

The Waanyi territory was in well-watered limestone and sandstone country, including parts of the Gregory River.

The whole area of the north was affected deeply by the pastoral boom opened up in 1881 in the Northern Territory, with massive stations under the control of a few eastern investors hastily stocked with cattle: the key watering sites were locked out, tribes were shot at sight, and many groups moved east into the Gulf of Carpentaria, where the same phenomenon repeated itself. The Waanyi and the Garawa, like many Gulf of Carpentaria tribes that found their areas taken over for pastoral leases and resisted dispossession, found themselves threatened. The Eastern Waanyi were wiped out: settler vigilantes and police magistrates employed native mounted troopers to ambush, murder and massacre any aboriginal groups they came across. The lessees of Gregory Downs submitted testimony in 1880 that the police rounded up blacks and then shot them, while that of Lawn Hill fived years later said that on his cattle run alone police had shot over a hundred blacks in three years, without achieving their aim of stopping the killing of livestock. The displaced Waanyi eventually took over the territory in the Lawn Hill area of the extinct Injilarija.

The Waanyi first lodged a native title claim over an area known to them traditionally as Wugujaji in June 1994. Under a Queensland Government land act of 1989, CZL was granted two mining leases covering 23,585 hectares extending through Waanyi land the Century Mine was established on it. Eventually the terms of a settlement were agreed on, and CZL paid funding, training and employment to the traditional peoples, an accord known as the $90 million offer.

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