Guringai
The Guringai (also Kuringai ) were an Aboriginal tribe who had lived for millennia on the land between Broken Bay in the north and Sydney Harbor in the south. The Guringai have demonstrably settled in the area for 7,400 years, in other sources numbers up to 20,000 years are given.
history
As hunters and gatherers , the Guringai subsisted on hunting mammals and marine animals, as well as collecting fruits and roots. In about 4 to 5 hours of activity per day they provided their nourishment and during the other time they cultivated their culture, which was strongly lived through ceremonies and rituals.
When the First Fleet arrived, the British colonists began to settle on their ancestral land and the Guringai were displaced from their original tribal territory. In less than a year, the Aboriginal population in the entire Sydney Basin had been decimated from an originally estimated 5,000 Aboriginal people, largely due to the smallpox epidemic in Australia in 1789 . The rapidly developing settler population threatened their fishing grounds as they fished with large nets, the kangaroos were decimated by hunting with firearms, and land grabbing through fencing eventually displaced them from their watering holes.
Tribal area
John Fraser was the first to define and demarcate an area in Australia as that of the Kuringgai in 1892. The more recent research further divides this into the tribes of Tharawal , Eora , Dharuk , Darkinjung , Awabakal , Worimi , Birpai , Ngamba and others.
The Guringai clans were the Garrigal, Cammeragal, Borregegal, Awaba, Walkeloa and others. It is estimated that they spoke 20 to 30 dialects, nine are linguistically confirmed today. The current area of the Ku-ring-gai-Chase National Park comprises parts of the traditional land of the Guringai, in which two clans lived: the Garrigal around the area of West Head and the Terramerragal in Turramurra .
Descendants of the Guringai still live in this area today and in 2001 the first Guringai festival took place in memory of the Guringai, which has been held annually from late May to July since then. The festival holds workshops, art exhibitions, demonstrations, discussions and shows films.
Artifacts
Significant traces of Guringai life can be found in the Ku-ring-gai-Chase National Park . More than 800 artefacts are secured on the grounds of the national park , including significant rock carvings, the Sydney rock engravings , burial sites , tool marks from the grinding of stone axes and places where the Aborigines lived and left litter.
The rock carvings on the sandstones in the gorges, on the coastlines and in caves show people and mythical figures, animals such as wallabies , fish, reptiles , birds, whales , sharks and also hunting tools such as boomerangs , spears and shields. Cave drawings and paintings can be found in the rocks or imprints of hands and feet, boomerangs and stone axes. Grinding marks from stone axes can be seen on the sandstone floors, along the streams and rivers, at waterfalls and water holes. There are numerous rubbish pits in this national park, often next to caves, rock overhangs or along the watercourses where the Aborigines fished or collected mussels. The pits mostly contain mussel shells, but also tools and bones from fish, mammals and mussels and sometimes human bones.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Aboriginal Heritage at www.environment.nsw.gov.au . Retrieved January 1, 2011
- ^ Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, Lion Island, Long Island and Spectacle Island Nature Reserves. New South Wales ( Memento of the original from March 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 700 kB). Retrieved January 1, 2010
- ↑ a b c A Brief Aboriginal History on www.aboriginalheritage.org . Retrieved January 1, 2011
- ^ Norman Barnett Tindale : Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits and Proper Names. University of California Press 1974. ISBN 0-520-02005-7
- ↑ a b Information on www.guringaifestival.com.au ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved January 1, 2011
