ABOUT MANINGRIDA

The town of Maningrida lies on the estuary of the Liverpool River, on the coast of Arnhem Land. The Kunibídji people are the traditional landowners of this country. The name Maningrida is an Anglicised version of the Kunibídji name Manayingkarírra, which comes from the phrase Mane djang karirra, meaning the place where the dreaming changed shape.

The Arnhem Land Reserve was established in 1931 and the township of Maningrida dates back to 1949 when Welfare Branch patrol officers Sid Kyle-Little and Jack Doolan were sent by the Government to set up a ration and trading post there. The trading post was abandoned after some 18 months, and a permanent Balanda presence was re-established by Dave and Ingrid Drysdale in 1957, partly to quell the post-war migration of Aboriginal people from the Blyth and Liverpool Rivers regions into Darwin and to repatriate people to the area.

Patrols went out to spread the word and encourage people to move into the settlement. Within a few years many people from the surrounding area lived in Maningrida. However, there were exceptions, the most notable being Rembarrnga/ Dangbon leader Mandarrk and his family who stayed out bush at Dumangerre and Yayminyi.

In 1972 the policy of Self-determination was introduced by the Australian Government. The basis of this policy is that indigenous Australians may have different needs and aspirations in some aspects of their lives to those of non-indigenous Australians. Central to this is land rights and in 1973 the Woodward Land Rights Commission was established.

Subsequently, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 was passed and Aboriginal people in the Maningrida region were granted inalienable freehold title to their lands under Federal law. The mosaic of land ownership in the Maningrida region relates to each individual’s clan affinity.There are up to 16 languages and dialects spoken in the Maningrida area, and most people in Maningrida speak two or three languages, with many older people speaking little English.

The word Balanda is used by all language groups in the Maningrida area to refer to non-Aboriginal people. Balanda is a corruption of the Macassan word Hollender, meaning Dutchman. Macassan visitors to the Maningrida area in the 18th and 19th centuries described white people this way and indigenous people have henceforth used the term to describe white-skinned visitors to Arnhem Land.