Summary

Cundeelee Reserve, located in southwest Western Australia, was set up as ration station in 1939 and then formally established as a mission in 1950. It was a difficult place to live because there was no water supply and was eventually closed in the mid 1980s for this reason. The traditional owners of the land are Tjuntjuntjara, known as the Spinifex People and their families go back at least 600 generations. Since their traditional lands in the Great Victoria Desert in Western Australia are so inhospitable and unsuited to agriculture there has been relatively little direct contact between them and European settlers, hence their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle has been maintained in large part.
A new community was built for the people of Cundeelee at Coonana where the ample water supply enabled more conventional housing, and this was inhabited from 1986 until 2014. Currently, the People from the Spinifex live in the community at Tjuntjuntjarra. The Spinifex people are famous for their bold-coloured 'dot paintings' which are made for their own purposes rather than for sale to a non-Aboriginal market. The Spinifex people were also the second tribe in Western Australia to receive recognition of their Native Title land rights over a piece of land spanning around 55,000 square km.
For more information see: https://www.facebook.com/ilkurlka.roadhouse/posts/491603494260392
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinifex_people

Related entries

Archival resources

National Centre for Indigenous Genomics

• Correspondence, 1959 - 1961, 02D-19; National Centre for Indigenous Genomics. Details
• Correspondence and Lists of Study Participants, 1971 - 1974, 02D-33; National Centre for Indigenous Genomics. Details
• Field Notebook, 1960 - 1961, FIELD-002; National Centre for Indigenous Genomics. Details
• Field Notes and Survey Notes, 1959, 02D-32; National Centre for Indigenous Genomics. Details
• Laboratory workbook, 1971, Lab-01-010; National Centre for Indigenous Genomics. Details
• Serology Results, 1960 - 1962, 02D-22; National Centre for Indigenous Genomics. Details