The Warumungu are a group of Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....

, many of whom speak Kriol

Australian Kriol language

Kriol is an Australian creole language that developed initially in the region of Sydney and Newcastle in New South Wales in the early days of White colonisation, and then moved west and north with White and Black stockmen and others...

 or the Pama–Nyungan language of Warumungu

Warumungu language

The Warumungu language is spoken by about 500 of the Warumungu people in Australia's Northern Territory. Traditionally classified in the large Southwest branch of the Pama–Nyungan family, Dixon classifies it as an isolate within Pama–Nyungan.The Warumungu had a highly developed sign language....

. They inhabit the region of Tennant Creek

Tennant Creek, Northern Territory

Tennant Creek is a town located in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is the fifth largest town in the Northern Territory and it is located on the Stuart Highway, just south of the intersection with the western terminus of the Barkly Highway....

 and Alice Springs in the Northern Territory

Northern Territory

The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...

 of Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 as well as small towns to the South

South Australia

South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...

.

History

In the 1870s, early white explorers

Exploration

Exploration is the act of searching or traveling around a terrain for the purpose of discovery of resources or information. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans...

 described the Warumungu as a flourishing nation

Nation

A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and/or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic make-up...

. However, by 1915, invasion and reprisal

Reprisal

In international law, a reprisal is a limited and deliberate violation of international law to punish another sovereign state that has already broken them. Reprisals in the laws of war are extremely limited, as they commonly breached the rights of civilians, an action outlawed by the Geneva...

 had brought them to the brink of starvation

Starvation

Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy, nutrient and vitamin intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death...

. In 1934, a reserve that had been set aside for the Warumungu in 1892 was revoked in order to clear the way for gold prospecting

Gold prospecting

Gold prospecting is the act of searching for new gold deposits. Methods used vary with the type of deposit sought and the resources of the prospector...

. By the 1960s, the Warumungu had been entirely removed from their native land. In 1978, the Central Land Council

Central Land Council

The Central Land Council is an Indigenous Land Council that represents the indigenous people of the southern half of the Northern Territory of Australia, predominantly in land issues...

 of the Northern Territory made a claim on behalf of the Warumungu under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act. A lengthy legal battle ensued, in which the litigations eventually went to the High Court of Australia

High Court of Australia

The High Court of Australia is the supreme court in the Australian court hierarchy and the final court of appeal in Australia. It has both original and appellate jurisdiction, has the power of judicial review over laws passed by the Parliament of Australia and the parliaments of the States, and...

. 15 years later, in 1993, most of the land claim was finally returned to the Warumungu. The Warumungu Land Claim is currently made up of ten separate parcels of land, which together makes up 3,090 square kilometers. In March 1993, Michael Maurice, a former Aboriginal Land Commissioner, said of the ordeal:

Warumungu language

Many Warumungu people continue to speak the Warumungu language

Warumungu language

The Warumungu language is spoken by about 500 of the Warumungu people in Australia's Northern Territory. Traditionally classified in the large Southwest branch of the Pama–Nyungan family, Dixon classifies it as an isolate within Pama–Nyungan.The Warumungu had a highly developed sign language....

 (ISO 639-3:

ISO 639-3

ISO 639-3:2007, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages, is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages. It extends the ISO 639-2...

 wrm). The Warumungu language is a Pama–Nyungan language similar to the Warlpiri language

Warlpiri language

The Warlpiri language is spoken by about 3000 of the Warlpiri people in Australia's Northern Territory. It is one of the Ngarrkic languages of the large Southwest branch of the Pama–Nyungan family, and is one of the largest aboriginal languages in Australia in terms of number of speakers.-...

 spoken by the Warlpiri

Warlpiri

The Warlpiri are a group of Indigenous Australians, many of whom speak the Warlpiri language. There are 5,000–6,000 Warlpiri, living mostly in a few towns and settlements scattered through their traditional land in Australia's Northern Territory, north and west of Alice Springs...

 people. It is a suffixing language, in which verbs are formed by adding a tense suffix

Suffix

In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

 (although some verbs are formed by compounding

Compound (linguistics)

In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...

 a preverb). As are many of the surviving Indigenous Australian languages, the Warumungu language is undergoing rapid change. The morphology

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

 used by younger speakers differs significantly than the one used by older speakers. An example of a Warumungu sentence might be "apurtu im deya o warraku taun kana", meaning "Father's mother, is she there, in town, or not?".

Warumungu is still classified as a living language, but its number of speakers is decreasing quickly. In the mid-1950s, Australian surveyor

Surveying

See Also: Public Land Survey SystemSurveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, and science of accurately determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional position of points and the distances and angles between them...

Robert Hoogenraad estimated that there were only about 700 people who could speak some Warumungu; by 1983, the population was estimated to be as small as 200 speakers.