Articulating difference

Abstract

This paper is about life in the borderlands around the settlement of South Australia. It focuses on the Gawler Ranges in South Australia where the ethnohistorical evidence suggests that ‘Western Desert’ Kokatha people, ‘Lakes’ Barngarla people and Wirangu speakers from the West Coast all held the country. Here we use the earliest reliable ethnohistorical record to examine how their abutment of difference worked. We find that accommodations and preferred relationships of marriage and of initiation – established through umari connections – made this possible. Show more