The Matuntara are an Indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory.

Language

Though called "Southern Luritja", the Matuntara seems to have been Antakarinya.[1]

Country

Norman Tindale estimated the Matuntara tribal lands to cover approximately 14,000 square miles (36,000 km2). Their nomadic lives were spent south of the Levi Range around the Palmer River tributary of the Finke River. Their eastern extension ran over to Erldunda, while their westerly boundary lay at Curtin Springs. Their lands extended across what is now the border, into South Australia.[2]

Their neighbours to the south were the Antakirinja. Their neighbours to the northwest were the Gugadja, with whom they are sometimes confused, being considered by some early explorers to have been a southern horde of the latter.[2]

History

The Matuntara at one point in time, around the turn of the 19-20 century, absorbed a branch of the Pitjantjatjara known as the Maiulataraclan, when the latter migrated eastwards to Tempe Downs from their grounds that lay to the north of the Petermann Range.[2]

Alternative names

Notes

  1. ^ These were, according to Tindale, usesd to refer to a clan of the Pitjantjatjara which had melted into the Matuntara tribe.[2]

Citations

  1. ^ C5 Antikarinya at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
  2. ^ a b c d e Tindale 1974, p. 231.

Sources

  • "AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australia". AIATSIS. 28 July 2023.
  • Planert, Wilhelm; Strehlow, Carl (1908). "Einige Bemerkungen über die von Dr. Planert auf Grund der Forschungen des MissionarsWettengel veröffentlichte Aranda-Grammatik". Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (in German). 40 (5): 698–703. JSTOR 23030339.
  • Róheim, Géza (January–June 1933). "Women and Their Life in Central Australia". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 63: 207–265. doi:10.2307/2843917. JSTOR 2843917.
  • Strehlow, Carl (1907). von Leonhardi, Moritz (ed.). Die Aranda- und Loritja-stämme in Zentral-Australien (PDF) (in German). Frankfurt am Main: Städtisches Völker-Museum.
  • Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Matuntara (NT)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-708-10741-6.
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