The Pakadji people, also known by the southern tribal exonym as the Koko Yao ( Kuuku Yaʼu ), are an Aboriginal Australian group of Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland . The ethnonym Koko Yaʼo is said literally to mean " talk, speech" ( koko / kuku ) 'this way' ( yaʼo ), though this has been questioned.
7-620: Pakadji is one of the Umpila group of dialects within the North Cape York Paman languages . They had a highly developed sign language , but used generally only one hand, with rapid movements, and little secondary reinforcement by physical or facial tics or gestures. Pakadji territory embraced roughly an area of 1,300 sq. miles around Weymouth Bay , the Pascoe River , and Temple Bay. It reached northwards as far as Cape Grenville ; and ran to
14-675: Is located at Lloyd Bay, roughly at the boundary between Umpila and Kuuku Ya'u lands. The chief varieties of Umpila, variously considered dialects or distinct languages, are: Typologically, Umpila is an agglutinative, suffixing, dependent-marking language, with a preference for Subject-Object-Verb constituent order. Grammatical relations are indicated by a split ergative case system: nominal inflections are ergative/absolutive, pronominals are nominative/accusative. Features of note include: historical dropping of initial consonants, complex verbal reduplication expressing progressivity and habitual aspect, 'optional' ergative marking. The Umpila have (or had)
21-731: Is spoken by about 100 Aboriginal people , many of them elderly. The land territory associated with the Umpila language group is located along the northeastern coast of Cape York Peninsula and stretches from the northern end of Temple Bay south to the Massey Creek region at the top of Princess Charlotte Bay, and west of the Great Dividing Range towards the township of Coen. Most of the remaining Umpila and Kuuku Ya'u speakers reside in Lockhart River Aboriginal Community, which
28-519: The season ushered in with the arrival of the northwest monsoon , beginning in late November/early December. In the kawali period they were often venture inland to harvest vegetables ( mai'yi ), yams ( dampu ) and bush honey, and construction materials like spear wood and weaving grasses. Donald Thomson gained the confidence of the Pakadji while spending 4 months with them during the season in which their initiation ceremonies ( Okainta ) were held, and
35-619: The southeast at Cape Weymouth. Inland it extended to the Dividing Range . The Pakadji were one of the Kawadji , or sandbeach people. These coastal tribes basically exploited the rich food resources on and off the sea-line facing the Coral Sea . The year was divided into two seasons, the kawali or dry season that began with the onset of the south-east trade winds, from April through to November, and wullo wantjan / wullo waiyin ('when thunder cries')
42-624: Was lodged seven years prior. The landmark ruling was delivered by Justice Debra Mortimer of the Federal Court of Australia , sitting at the Supreme Court of Queensland in Cairns . Pakadji language Umpila , also known as Ompeila, Ompela, Oom-billa, or Koko-umpilo, is an Aboriginal Australian language , or dialect cluster , of the Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland. It
49-512: Was permitted to be present during the rites. He focused in particular on stories related to Iwayi (Old Man Crocodile). On 25 November 2021, 1,202 km (464 sq mi) of land on the eastern side of the Cape York Peninsula were handed back to the Kuuku Ya'u people, at the same time as (986 km (381 sq mi) were awarded to the Uutaalnganu people, in a native title claim that
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