Anangu traditional owners (Australia)

Last modified: 2008-12-13 by jonathan dixon
Keywords: anangu | stars: seven points | stars: southern cross and pointers | southern cross and pointers | kungkarangkalpa |
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image by Susanne Martain, 31 Jul 2005

• Description of the flag
• History of the flag

See also:

• Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yakunytjatjara, the council for the Anangu lands
• Australia
• Indigenous Peoples of Australia

Description of the flag

[The Anangu (traditional owners) flag] has two squares.

The right one has the colour of the manta (earth). On the right half is a seven point star. The seven point white star is for wati nyirrunya. The background is the ochre colour of the Northern Territory Flag. The left square is South Australian Flag blue. On the left is a black circle containing the Seven Sisters, called: kungkarangkalpa. This is the seven stars of the Southern Cross as in the 1870 South Australian Flag.
Patrick Byrt, 31 July 2005

History of the flag

The Anangu (traditional owners) Flag was first displayed to the South Australian Government in the correspondence of a petition signed by over 100 Anangu traditional owners to the South Australia Premier, the Hon. Mike Rann MP, on Bastille Day 2005, July 14.
Patrick Byrt, 31 July 2005

According to the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park site,

Aṉangu is the term that Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal people from the Western Desert region of Australia use to refer to themselves. In the past the word Aṉangu had a more (sic) specific usage, being used to refer to a person or people as opposed to other non-human forms of life. Over the years, since contact with Europeans, it has come into common use in the region as a term referring to Aboriginal people, as opposed to non-Aboriginal people, as well as Aboriginal people who come from other parts of Australia.

The Anangu are the traditional owners of what is generally known as the Pitjantjatjara lands but the language of the Anangu includes both the Pitjantjatjara and the Yankunytjatjara, and the Maralinga Tjarutja and the various Anangu peoples of the Northern Territory at Mututjulu, and the wider Anangu of Ngaanyatjarra and the Ngaatjatjarra.

It is the traditional owners upset with the way that the South Australian & Federal governments have not been listening to the local community voices who have put forward the flag with the cultural authority of the TOs at Fregon (Kaltjiti), Iwantja (Indulkana), Ernabella (Pukatja), Turkey Bore, Mimili, and the other associated homelands in the main areas of the Yankunytjatjara (known to non-Anangu as Pitjantjatjara) lands.
Patrick Byrt, 12 September 2005