| Group: | Gamilaroi people |
| Population: | approx. 13,000 |
The Gamilaroi, also known as Gomeroi, Kamilaroi, Kamillaroi and other variations, are an Aboriginal Australian people whose lands extend from New South Wales to southern Queensland. They form one of the four largest Indigenous nations in Australia.
The ethnonym Gamilaroi is formed from, meaning "no", and the suffix, bearing the sense of "having". It is a common practice among Australian tribes to have themselves identified according to their respective words for "no".
The Kamilaroi Highway, the Sydney Ferries Limited vehicular ferry "Kamilaroi" (1901–1933), the stage name of Australian rapper and singer the Kid Laroi and a cultivar of Durum wheat have all been named after the Kamilaroi people.
See main article: Gamilaroi language. Gamilaraay language is classified as one of the Pama–Nyungan languages. The language is no longer spoken, as the last fluent speakers died in the 1950s. However, some parts have been reconstructed by late field work, which includes substantial recordings of the related language, Yuwaalaraay, which continued to be spoken down to the 1980s. Analysing these materials has permitted a good deal of reconstructive work. Robert M. W. Dixon and his student Peter Austin recorded some around Moree, while Corinne Williams wrote a thesis on the Yuwaaliyaay dialect spoken at Walgett and Lightning Ridge.
The Gamilaraay, like many other tribes, taught young men a secret language, called tyake, during their rites of initiation. In these systems, the normal profane terms used in everyday speech had to be substituted with the special mystical vocabulary.
According to Norman Tindale's estimation, the Gamilaraay's tribal domains encompassed some 29000disp=flipNaNdisp=flip, from around Singleton in the Hunter Valley through to the Warrumbungle Mountains in the west and up through the present-day centres of Quirindi, Gunnedah, Tamworth, Narrabri, Wee Waa, Walgett, Moree, Collarenebri, Lightning Ridge and Mungindi in New South Wales, to Nindigully in south west Queensland.
The Kamilaroi were hunters and agriculturalists with a band-level social organisation. Important vegetable foods were yams and other roots, as well as a sterculia grain, which was made into a bread. Insect larvae, frogs, and eggs of several different animals were also gathered. Various birds, kangaroos, emus, possums, echidnas, and bandicoots were among the important animals hunted. Fish were also consumed, as were crayfish, mussels, and shrimp. Men typically hunted, cleaned, and prepared the game for cooking. Women did the actual cooking, in addition to fishing and farming. Individual Kamilaroi did not eat animals that were their totems.
The nation was made up of many smaller family groups who had their own parcels of land to sustain them. One of the great Kings of this tribe was "Red Chief", who is buried near Gunnedah. The Kamilaroi were regarded as fierce warriors and there is ample evidence of intertribal warfare. The Northern Gamilaroi people have a strong cultural connection with the Bigambul people, and the tribes met regularly for joint ceremonies at Boobera Lagoon near the present-day town of Goondiwindi.
Kamilaroi tradition includes Baiame, the ancestor or patron god. The Baiame story tells how Baiame came down from the sky to the land, and created rivers, mountains, and forests. He then gave the people their laws of life, traditions, songs, and culture. He also created the first initiation site. This is known as a bora; a place where boys were initiated into manhood. When he had finished, he returned to the sky, and people called him the Sky Hero or All Father or Sky Father. He is said to be married to Birrahgnooloo (Birran-gnulu), who is often identified as an emu, and with whom he has a son Turramūlan. In other stories Turramūlan is said to be brother to Baiame. It was forbidden to mention or talk about the name of Baiame publicly. Women were not allowed to see drawings of Baiame nor approach Baiame sites, which are often male initiation sites (boras). Women were instead instructed by Turramūlan's sister, Muni Burribian. In rock paintings Baiame is often depicted as a human figure with a large head-dress or hairstyle, with lines of footsteps nearby. He is always painted in front view; Turramūlan is drawn in profile. Baiame is often shown with internal decorations such as waistbands, vertical lines running down the body, bands and dots.
In Kamilaroi star-lore myth it is recounted that Orion, known as Berriberri set out in pursuit of the Pleiades (Miai-miai) and cornered them in a mother-tree where they were transformed into yellow and white cockatoos. His attempts to capture them were blocked by Turramūlan, a one-eyed, one-legged legendary figure associated with the Pole star. They called Orion's Belt, ghūtūr, a girdle that covered his invincible boomerang.(burran) The seventh of Miai-miai, being less beautiful, was shy and afraid and she was thus transformed into the least visible of the 7 Pleiades.
The rite of passage whereby Gamilaraay youths are inducted by initiation into full membership of the tribe was conducted at a Bora ceremony on a bora site especially prepared for the occasion. Tribes ready to participate in such rituals are contacted, and the ceremonies lasted several days.
The major bora, called Baiame's ground, was cleared on loamy umah soil, roughly 75feet in diameter, with the scraped earth used to create an embanked ring about 8- high to fence off the sacred space, apart from one opening which led into a thunburran or narrows pathway that ran some 270yd off to a smaller circle, some 47feet in diameter, called a goonaba, constructed in a similar fashion, Inside this ring two stumps (warrengahlee) formed from uprooted trees, one a coolabah the other a belar, trimmed and turned upside down so that the roots, decorated with twists of bark, flared out.
The pathway leading novices from the larger to the smaller circle was adorned with yammunyamun, figures cut into the exposed sapwood of trees along the route, or drawn on the ground. On the occasion observed by Mathews, on the right hand side, 90yd down the track, was a mocked up bowerbird's nest, and 3yd further on a scarecrow figure with trousers and jacket stuffed with grass, representing a white man. As the youths passed along this track, the significance of the symbols and their relevance to tribal beliefs was explained. Further down the path, a yammunyamun image of a bullock was formed from bark, dirt and the animal's skull. At 143yd, a 9disp=flipNaNdisp=flip long representation of Baiame and his spouse Gooberangal lay, moulded from the earth, respectively on the right and left of the track. Further on, still on the left, was a carved figure of the Emu, apparently crouching, its head pointed towards the large bora. To its right, a further 3yd on, was Goomee, Baiame's fire, a 1disp=flipNaNdisp=flip high mound with a lit fire on top. A further 18yd on, parallel to the track and on Goomee's side, a codfish was depicted, and after it the Currea, a serpentine creature, and, 15yd on the other side of the path, two death adders, followed then by a turkey's nest, an earth-stuffed porcupine's skin, and a kangaroo rat's nest. At last, there was a carving of a full tribal man on one side of the track, and an aboriginal woman on the other.
The Sandstone Caves (within the Pilliga Nature Reserve) are co-managed by the Gamilaraay people together with NPWS. All interpretive signage is in the Gamilaraay language followed by English. A small example, created by the Coonabarabran Gamilaraay Language Circle (Suellen Tighe, Maureen Sutler, Sid Chatfield & Peter Thompson), is given below. (See adjoining image.)
| Nhalay Yarrul Burranbalngayaldanhi Mulamula, nhalay yarrul | Ngamila! | This rock Water & wind have caused this rock Look out | Don't touch! | Yilambu Yilambu dhurray marandu Ngamila | Garriya minyagaa ngiilay gaanga! | Long Ago Our ancestors made stone tools. Look out | Don't collect anything! | Dhawun Giirr dhulubaraay dhibaraay, Giirr dhamali dhawundu nginunha | The land Around here there are plants, Let the land touch you |
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