The Yan-nhaŋu , also known as the Nango , are an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory . They have strong sociocultural connections with their neighbours, the Burarra , on the Australian mainland.
8-914: The Crocodile Islands are a group of islands belonging to the Yan-nhaŋu people of the Northern Territory of Australia . They are located off the coast of Arnhem Land in the Arafura Sea . As of 2023 the Crocodile Islands are protected as part of the National Reserve System as a protected area called the Crocodile Islands Maringa Indigenous Protected Area (IPA). The islands were formed by stabilising sea levels 5000 years before present. They were discovered by
16-605: The Cunningham Islands . With regard to the Crocodile Islands group , Tindale designated Mooroonga and Yabooma as Yan-nhaŋu, adding that they were also present at Banyan Island, where the Woolen River debouches. The Yan-nhaŋu were formed of eight clans, belonging to either a Dua or Yirritja moiety :- Dua moieties (5 clans) Yirritja moieties . (3 clans) In 1921, Elcho Island was chosen as
24-553: The 1980s. The visiting American anthropologist W. Lloyd Warner visited the Crocodile island group on two occasions in 1927 and 1928, as did others such as Donald Thompson in the 1930s. In the early 1990s a young anthropologist, conversing in Djambarrpuyŋu with an elderly woman, Laurie Baymarrwangga , on a beach on the island of Murruŋga, discovered that she was still fluent in a language that had been barely recorded, apart from
32-622: The Dutch in the seventeenth century and named the Crocodils Eÿlandt . Several of the Crocodile Islands, with their associated mudflats , have been identified by BirdLife International as forming the Milingimbi Islands Important Bird Area (IBA) because they support large numbers of waders , or shorebirds. Murrungga Island has one of the most significant migratory bird nesting and breeding sites in
40-470: The North of Australia. The enormous fresh water lakes of Garratha, Riyanhuna and Ganbuwa are home to hundreds of species of birds, as well as a large population of Saltwater Crocodiles , after which the islands are named. Access to the islands is restricted; before visiting, permission must be sought from the appropriate land council. Yan-nha%C5%8Bu The Yan-nhaŋu people derive their ethnonym from
48-509: The Yan-nhaŋu then found Milingimbi subject to an influx of other Yolŋu peoples from the mainland, who were drawn to the Mission. Inter-clan fighting erupted, and many Yan-nhaŋu shifted to the less accessible island of Murrungga. The Yan-nhangu were something of an anomaly in the ethnographic literature. They were described as extinct, and there was little mention of them, even down to as late as
56-679: The language they spoke, yän meaning 'tongue/speech' and nhaŋu a proximate deictic word signifying 'this'. Yan-nhangu is a member of the Yolŋu language family . In his classic survey of Australian tribes, Norman Tindale assigned their modern territory to the Djinang people . He writes that the Yan-nhaŋu ( Nango ) were indigenous to the Wessel Islands east of Brown Strait (from Jirrgari island to Cape Wessel), Galiwin'ku/Elcho Island and Drysdale Island . Their territory also encompassed
64-477: The site for a Methodist Overseas Mission . However, oil drilling by the Naphtha Petroleum Company brought about the closure of the proposed mission site, which therefore was relocated to Milingimbi. This mission was established by James Watson in 1922, after that religious organisation had obtained a lease on the site in 1921. Following this twofold usurpation of their key homeland isles,
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