Martu People and Culture 

The Martu are the traditional owners of the country which extends from the Great Sandy Desert in the north to around Wiluna in the south.  Across this country, Martu share a common law, culture and language and are one of the oldest living cultures in the world with archaeological evidence dating artefacts as old as 39 000 years.
At its peak, there were over 600 different kin/language groups in the Martu region.
Like many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Martu speak or understand numerous languages. For most Martu, even the children, English is a second, third or other language.

The Martu were some of the last of Australia’s Indigenous people to make contact with European Australians with many migrating from their desert lands into neighbouring pastoral stations and missions in the 1950s and 1960s.  Sometimes this migration followed the Canning Stock Route north to the eastern Kimberley or south to Wiluna and then east to Warakuna and Warburton. Many older people have first-hand experience of life prior to European contact and have extensive traditional cultural and ecological knowledge of their country. In 2002 the Martu were awarded native title rights to over 13.6 million hectares of the Western Desert.  This is referred to as the Martu Native Title Determination.  The determination stretches from the Percival Lakes in the north to south of Lake Disappointment, and from near Jigalong and Balfour Downs in the west to the Kiwirrkurra and Ngaanyatjarra native title determinations in the east.

The main communities in the determination are Jigalong, Parnngurr, Punmu and Kunawarritji.  Jigalong is the most well-known of the communities having been established as a maintenance depot for the rabbit proof fence.  It was made famous as the subject of a movie about three children who walked back from Moore River Settlement north of Perth called Rabbit Proof Fence (2002).  Jigalong was subsequently turned into a mission before being handed over to the Martu people in 1969.

The other communities were established in the mid-1980s as a part of the then homelands movement, when people decided to return to live on their country.

 

As with many remote communities nationally, population numbers in the communities vary during the year.

“For Martu people who live in this land, it’s the song line and the land around this area, it’s so special to them. We connect with the land – it’s our dreaming, our spirits, our culture.
It’s my life. It’s all Martu people’s ancestors, our great grandmother’s and grandfather’s. What the old people told me – to try and look after our culture, law and the land.
So we need to protect Martu culture and the land and the community that lives around it.”

 — Clifton Girgirba, Martu Ranger, KANYIRNINPA JUKURRPA