Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this blog post may contain images or refers to names of Aboriginal people who have passed; this is not meant to cause distress or offence but raise awareness of our shared history and the story of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages across Queensland.
Welcome to Week Thirty-Two of the A-Z of Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages!
This week's language is Yiman from the Central Queensland region, particularly the Upper Dawson River extending from Bigge Range south towards Great Dividing Range, taking in localities of Theodore, Taroom, Cracow and Wandoan. Yiman is also known as Yeeman, Iman, Jiman, Ji:man, Emon, etc. The language group is centred on the Dawson which saw a lot of frontier violence in the 1850's with groups forced to flee south to avoid the ongoing reprisals from Hornet Bank and Cullin-la-Ringo. As a result, the language and the people were considered 'extinct'; however, Yiman descendants are actively reaffirming their identity along with reviving their language.
Austlang indicates there are no known speakers of Yiman; there are community revival efforts supported by the Central Queensland Language Centre which draws upon historical materials as well as community knowledge. There exist limited vocabularies and wordlists, mainly historical sources, which indicate there is a relationship to the Wakka Wakka language chain. Tindale in his work refers to the group as Jiman and his collection at the South Australian Museum holds some material - the image below is the entry for Jiman.
Jiman entry, Tindale Collection (SA Museum).
Curr in his 1887 publication The Australian Race ... has several wordlists from the Dawson River area which may include Yiman vocabulary. A further source in the State Library collections is OM78-02 Kathleen Emmerson Papers which includes several wordlists from the Dawson River Catchment with one identified as being 'Ji:man' in a comparative table with Wakka Wakka.
This is the source for the following Yiman words:
- booran - wind
- djura - hungry
- karbong - ground, earth
- kroman - kangaroo
- merwa - thunder
- muree - emu
- nunda - camp
- warren - boomerang
The A-Z of Queensland Languages series will have a short break in the New Year; with the upcoming International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022-32, State Library will be seeking input from guest bloggers to share their language journeys!
Desmond Crump
Indigenous Languages Coordinator, State Library of Queensland
State Library of Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages Webpages
State Library of Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages Map
Spoken: Celebrating Queensland languages exhibition
Jarjum Stories exhibition
Old Words, New Ways upcoming exhibition
Minya Birran: What next for Indigenous Languages?
Images
Cover image: Dawson River flooding Taroom. John Oxley Library Negative number: 60814
Jiman Entry, Tindale Collection, South Australian Museum website.
References and Further Reading
State Library collections have limited material relating to Yiman and neighbouring languages; however, most of these items are part of larger, general linguistic or historical references on Central Queensland, particularly Wakka Wakka and Biri.
Breen, G. (2009) “The Biri dialects and their neighbours”. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, V133, No.2. SER 506.942
Curr, E. M. (1887) The Australian Race: its origins, languages, customs, place of landing in Australia and the routes by which it spread itself over that continent. RBF 572.994 cur
Holmer, N. (1983) Linguistic Survey of South-Eastern Queensland. J 499.15 HOL
OM78-02 Kathleen Emmerson Papers 1933-1968.
Mathew, J. (1910) Two representative tribes of Queensland: with an inquiry concerning the origin of the Australian race. J 306.0899915 MAT
Mathew, J. (1926) "Vocabulary of (i) the Kiramai Language, Herbert River, Queensland, and of (ii) the Wulili Language, Auburn, Redbank, Camboon, Walloor on the Dawson", Report of the Eighteenth Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, pp. 547-550. NAT 500 AUS
Roth, W. (1898) The Aborigines of the Rockhampton and surrounding coast districts. Microfilm. FILM 0714
Tennant-Kelly, C. and University of Queensland (2011) The Caroline Tennant-Kelly ethnographic collection: fieldwork accounts of Aboriginal culture in the 1930s. (CD-ROM) HCF 305.89915 CAR
Terrill, A. (1998) Biri. J 499.15 TER
Tindale, N. B. (1974) Aboriginal tribes of Australia: their terrain, environmental controls, distribution, limits and proper names. Q 994.0049915 tin
Weblinks
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS)
Central Queensland Language Centre
South Australian Museum - Tindale Collection
Woorabinda Indigenous Knowledge Centre (IKC)
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