Yinikutira

Yinikutira, also recorded as the Jinigudira, were an indigenous Australian people who once lived along the Ningaloo Coast in the area of the Exmouth Peninsula now known as the Cape Range National Park.

History

The area was described by William Dampier, in 1699, and American whalers are known to have hunted sperm and then humpback whales off the Ningaloo coast as early as the 1790s, and it is thought probably they landed to seek meat and refresh their water supplies.^[1] Yinikutira people gave assistance and then hospitality to two Dalmatian Italians from the Austro-Hungarian Stefano who after the Stefano was shipwrecked on the Ningaloo Reef in 1875. The two, Michele Bacich (17) and Giovanni Iurich (20), later, on repatriation to Ragusa, provided an account of their experiences in a manuscript (Naufraghi dello Stefano) written up by a Jesuit priest, Father Sterfano Scurla, which also contains a word-list of the language they learnt during their three month sojourn with the Yinikutira.^[2] The Yinikutira's staple diet was based on fish, turtle and dugong.^[3] They lived in the mangroves and would venture out to sea on logs.^[1] In that same year, 1876, the first pastoral lease was taken up in the area when Minilya Station was established over the Exmouth Peninsula in its entirely. After subdivisions, Thomas Carter established the Yardie Creek Station over 54,600 hectares.

At some point in this time, the Yinikutira disappeared from history. It has been speculated that, after the ColonialSecretary's Office forbade the use of convict labour above the 26th parallel, the local workforce among pearlers and pastoralists began to recruit indigenous tribes. The provisions of the subsequent Master and Servant Act (1867) meant that in this area, as applied, natives who absconded from contracted service ended up doing hard labour in Roebourne prison. The available evidence suggests that the local tribes such as the Yinikutira were decimated by the practice of blackbirding and introduced diseases.^[1][3]

No indigenous people of the present day claim descent from the Yunikutira.^[1] The Yardie Creek Station was eventually re-acquired in 1959 by the Western Australian Government to become part of the Cape Range National Park.^[1]

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