Ngadjuri

The Ngadjuri people are a group of Indigenous Australians whose traditional lands lie in the mid north of South Australia with a territory extending from Gawler in the south to Orroroo in the north.

Traditional Lands

Although the lands of the Ngadjuri were extensive, their principal camping and burial grounds are believed to have been at Clare, Auburn, Macaw Creek and near Kapunda.

When Anglo-European Caucasian settlers first arrived in 1836 at Holdfast Bay (now Glenelg), the land was considered in the 1834 South Australia Act passed by the British Parliament and by Governor Hindmarsh as Commander in chief in his Proclamation of 1836, to be a barren wasteland. In contrast to the rest of Australia, terra nullius did not apply to the new province. The Letters Patent establishing the Province of South Australia attached to the Act acknowledged Aboriginal ownership and stated that no actions could be undertaken that would affect the rights of any Aboriginal natives of the said province to the actual occupation and enjoyment in their own persons or in the persons of their descendants of any land therein now actually occupied or enjoyed by such natives. Under the act the native inhabitants were assumed to have become British subjects. Although the patent guaranteed land rights under force of law for the indigenous inhabitants it was ignored by the South Australian Company authorities and squatters.