Kuku Yalanji Aboriginal People Of The Daintree

‘Welcome to Kuku Yalanji country. The area you are travelling through has great spiritual and cultural significance to our people’ **

The Tribal Group

The entire Daintree-Cape Tribulation/Bloomfield region is a small part of the Kuku Yalanji tribal area. As a whole, this extends from Mossman in the south to Annan River in the north and as far west as Laura and Palmer River. The Kuku Yalanji people are a single tribal group as distinct from the neighbouring Kuku Yimidhirr to the north and Jabugay/Yirrigandji to the south.

The groups to the east of the range associated with the rainforest environment are more commonly referred to as Eastern Kuku Yalanji. They have a single language with slight dialect variations according to various sub-groups. These larger nations consist of smaller, geographically bound clan estates whose ownership and use rights are passed through the male line. These family estates are essentially a complex network of sites of religious, resource or other practical significance, along with the lands and resources between them.

Mythology

Kuku Yalanji mythology and presence in this region originates from the actions of the Rainbow Serpent (Kurriyala) in a very ancient time (Nujakura) and its creations of the environment as we see it today. Many prominent features of the region have a complex mythological component. These may be either animal-like, human-like or an element of the universe. As a result, story places or cultural sites represent past activities or current residence beneath the surface and have a very high cultural significance, so are often considered dangerous to approach or take resources from, except in prescribed ways or by the right person. The mythology and other powerful properties attributed to most story places are the reason why the Kuku Yalanji regard damage and destruction or inappropriate management as not acceptable.

Cultural Features

The islands, beaches, creek mouths, backing dunes and lowland rainforest of the Daintree area also provided a major focus for camping and other uses for the Kuku Yalanji. Combined with the fringing reef and sea, a diverse range of resources were available to the Yalanji people on a systematic, seasonal and cultural basis.

Characteristic cultural features of the Daintree region include a complex network of Aboriginal walking tracks. These were based around two major tracks, one along the coast and one further inland which wre joined by an intricate network of associated tracks which connected all destinations, places of cultural importance and resource use. Many of these were later developed into the roads and tracks used todoay.

Open sites are also common in the rainforest-covered coastal flats and coastal areas as isolated camps. Such sites generally consist of small nut cracking rocks, grinding implements or combination of both. Artifacts are also often present.

Post Contact Settlement and Land Use

Although Cook in 1770 and King (in 1827) passed near the coast, Europeans did not enter the region until the late 1870s when red cedar was discovered and harvested on the Daintree and Bloomfield Rivers. The Daintree was opened for selection in 1877 and blocks of land were taken up at Bloomfield in 1882.

The Mason family were the first white settlers in the Cape Tribulation area. At the time of their arrival Walter Mason reported that more than 300 aborigines lived along this coast in small family units and many more camped here on the way to adjacent areas. Following the cutters and tin mining activity in and around the region, combined with permanent European settlements, the Kuku Yalanji were forced into Missions at Bloomfield in 1885, Mossman Gorge (1916) and Daintree River (1961). From then on, traditional lifestyles were irreversibly changed with the Kuku Yalanji subjected to various government policies of the time which ranged from 'dispersal' to 'assimilation' to the current 'self-determination' policy.

Despite all of this the Kuku Yalanji have managed to maintain many important aspects of their cultural identity and most predominantly their use, association and connection to Kuku Yalanji Country.

To the Kuku Yalanji people today, the concept of nature and culture being inextricably bound continues. As a result the Daintree area and its features maintain their high cultural significance, not only in relation to traditional ownership and native title interest to the land, but also because of its complex system of totemic features, oral traditions, its important plant and animal species, other significant cultural places, old and current camping places, walking track networks and their archaeological and environmental features.

Amongst the Kuku Yalanji there is extensive knowledge of boundaries, family connection, place names, bush medicine and other detailed cultural information. As culture is not static, modern lifestyles contain a mix of these traditional practices with more common contemporary practices.

**The Mossman Gorge Community Rangers have provided this information and it has been approved by the Kuku Yalanji elders to be told to visitors. This section is taken from 'A Handbook for Tour Guides - Daintree River to Cape Tribulation' (pp.1-8, 1-9), a co-operative venture between the Wet Tropics Management Authority and the Queensland Environment Protection Agency, and funded by the Daintree Rescue Package.

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