Tindale's Catalogue of Australian Aboriginal Tribes
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Ngalea (SA)
LocationSalt Lake districts in Western (or Great Victoria) Desert northwest of Ooldea, including Serpentine, Wanna, and Forrest Lakes. In recent years they have also used the areas around Lakes Auwuru, Maurice, Wyola, and Nurrari abandoned by the Kokata for fear of the Jangkundjara. They also used the mallee scrub belt north of the Nullarbor Plains, where water supplies are obtained almost solely from mallee roots. Social organization has no sectional terms; alternate generations system with Nganantaraka and Tanamiltjan. They must not be confused with the Northern Territory tribe at Mount Davenport, the Ngalia, who have a four-class system. They moved as a body south to Ooldea in the 1930s and are now (1969) settled on Yalata Mission near the Head of the Bight, 250 miles (400 km.) southeast of their former home. It appears they had long standing access rights to Ooldea water supplies in drought times and they followed a traditional route in coming south. They now travel by train to Western Australia where they have been reported by one observer as if they were a tribe located there. Their northern boundaries are only known in terms of native waters whose geographic positions have not been fully identified, hence the boundaries shown are uncertain.
Co-ordinates129°0'E x 29°0'S
Area15,000 sq. m. (39,000 sq. km)
ReferencesHowitt, 1904; Bates, 1918; Campbell and Lewis, 1926; Elkin, 1931, 1940; Tindale, 1940 and 1957, 1964, 1966, 1968 MSS; Berndt, 1959, 1964; Tindale and George, 1971.
Alternative NamesNgalia, Ngalija, Ngaliawongga, Tangara (of eastern tribes; term also used for the Antakirinja), Windakan (name applied to language, also to Wirangu tribe), Nangga (men, i.e., circumcised persons), Nanggarangku (lit. 'hostile men,' a term applied by the Pitjandjara), Nanggaranggu, Willoo-rara (means 'west').
This information is reproduced from NB Tindale's Aboriginal Tribes of Australia (1974). Please be aware that much of the data relating to Aboriginal language group distribution and definition has undergone revision since 1974. Please note also that this catalogue represents Tindale's attempt to depict Aboriginal tribal distribution at the time of European contact.

Collection AA23 Daisy May Bates

Collection AA338 Norman Barnett Tindale

Collection AA689 Joseph Benjamin Birdsell