Abstract
The Tiwi (numbering approximately 2,000) live on two Islands, Melville (5,700 sq. km) and Bathurst (2,070 sq. km) separated by a narrow strait from mainland Australia and skirted by the strong currents of the Arafura Sea. They have no near linguistic relationship to mainland language groups. Under the Lands Rights Act (NT) of 1976 they regained legal possession of all their traditional lands. They govern these islands through the Tiwi Land Council. They have always resisted visitors to their island, in the past often killing them outright (Hart, Pilling, and Goodale 1988). With only bark canoes they rarely ventured across Clarence Strait to visit the mainland people whose hunting smoke they could barely see on exceptionally clear days. Before the 1788 invasion of the mainland by the British, and until the twentieth century, the Tiwi world consisted only of Tiwi people of the same language and all of known relationship to others.1
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© 2003 Roger Ivar Lohmann
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Goodale, J.C. (2003). Tiwi Island Dreams. In: Dream Travelers. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982476_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982476_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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