Talk:Wilyakali

Proposed merger
Wiljakali seems to be about the same people. Can someone with more knowledge confirm?--Mhockey (talk) 11:01, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

I am not an expert - having said that the two people groups appear to be related but different. I have referred to the Norman Tindale records in the South Australia Museum and according to these (and I must say it is not clear cut) the WILJAKALI lived from just north of Broken Hill NSW going south west into modern South Australia following roughly the modern highway. The other are from the Barrington Ranges slightly to the north. As far as I can discern these are two related and adjoining "riverine tribes" with a pre-European degree of integration and interaction that is uncertain. To make things more complex, Tindale also speculated that the Wiljakali may have been refugees that moved south separating from the Wilakali in the 19th century when the combined tribe came under external pressure from a third tribe (Ngadjuri). Suggest keep separate at the moment till more information is at hand.:D A R C 12345 (3/4/17)


 * Agree - they look the same to me, and Wilya seems to be equated to Wiljakali in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, Incorporated, Volumes 67-68 p247. Batternut (talk) 09:40, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Tindale is not the Bible (he's actually more reliable than that of course!) and as D A R C observes there is confusion here. He has no mention of Wilya. On Wiljakali he states that Howitt said the Wiljakali were part of the Ichumundi nation. If you check the pages in Howitt which Tindale is citing for this, The Native Tribes of South Australia, 1904 pp.97-98 (in the Grey Range) then it is obvious that for Tindale, the Wilya in Howitt refer to what Tindale calls the Wiljakali. Linguistically, the only difference would be the y/j orthography, the -kali ethnonymic suffix for people making Wilj(y)akali signify 'the Wilj(y)a people'. There is a lot of confusion nonetheless. In my preliminary rewrite of the Dieri (which requires major expansion) there is no mention of the Wilya as being east of that tribe. Peter Austin says that east of the Diyari/Dieri lay the the Yandruwandha and Yawarrawarrka (see now Yandruwandha, not Howitt's Wilya (Wiljakali). Tindale places these people (whom he calls Jandruwanta) 'South of Cooper Creek from Innamincka to Carraweena.' My view is that given we have two article Wilyakali and Wiljakali (where 'y' and j are just different orthographical conventions for transcribing basically the same sound, and given that the Wilyakali is and will remain an empty and poorly sourced stub, we should just merge them, which effectively means deleting Wilyakali. I will be returning to these problems when I have done all of the other SA tribal articles, and if some light is thrown on the crux in modern sources, then that information can be either entered here, or a separate article recreated. I say this because far too many articles in this scantily covered topic on Australian tribes are thinly sourced often with links to websites that cannot be accessed, as here.Nishidani (talk) 11:34, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * delete Wilyakali (not Wiljakali)? Batternut (talk) 12:05, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * (ec) Better still, just change the name here from Wilyakali to Wiljakali, per Tindale, and remove the Wiljakali stub simultaneously. Getten fucken old.Nishidani (talk) 12:08, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Possible rename from Wilyakali to Wiljakali would be another discussion... let's just remove the duplication for now. I would change Wiljakali to a redirect to Wilyakali initially. Batternut (talk) 12:25, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I know Wikipedia runs on formalities, but now that I have merged the only thinking lacking from this article, by including D A R C's map, there is no longer any reason for the existence of the Wiljakali article. I'm not a technician in these things. But some Speedy delete procedure should now be set up for the other article.Nishidani (talk) 12:39, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Etymology of the name Wilyakali
In Wilyakali we now read: Etymologically the word kali appears to be an archaic term meaning 'people' and is incorporated in numerous tribal names of the Darling River valley, including Paakantyi (Creek People),Bula-ali (Hill people) and Thangkakali.

My reading of the sources tells me that "Paakantyi" means "River people", while "Paaruntyi" means "Creek People", where "creek" refers to the "Paroo (Creek or River)" and "river" refers to the "Darling (River)". An earlier version seems to have made the correct connection between "Paaka" and "river" which the article has now lost.

But why is either "Paakantyi" or "Paaruntyi" relevant as an example of the use of the "-kali" suffix meaning "people", when both use the "-ntyi" suffix instead?!!

yoyo (talk) 18:38, 5 June 2017 (UTC)