Kuku Yalanji Aboriginal people

Thousands of years before Captain James Cook sighted what is now Flagstaff Hill and first looked on Four Mile Beach, a contrasting culture was flourishing in the rich riverine flood plains and fertile rainforest valleys.

The Kuku Yalanji Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers, with more than five groups ranging across the terrain as the seasons changed, yielding their sustenance from the rivers, beaches, reefs and seas.

Theirs was a simple yet ingeniously sophisticated culture. They devised and operated successful traps for fish and game, they learnt to prepare the often toxic rainforest foods for consumption, and evolved social mores that bound the fabric of their society firmly. From their semi permanent huts, they watched as the seasons changed, ready to follow the path of the game and the yield of the harvest.

For the Kuku Yalanji, the environment was a “culturised”, humanised landscape which was often described in human terms, so that changes within it were interpreted as changes in the human or social world. It was interacted with, spoken to and acted upon. It then reacted by providing goods and resources and other social foundations.

The discovery of gold in the Hodgkinson River, mineral explorations, tin mining and the Christie Palmerston road to the coast in 1877 brought with it an incredible and inconceivable change for the Kuku Yalanji tribe. Contact between such groups was often violent with fatalities occurring on both sides.

Ultimately these influences sufficiently undermined Aboriginal gatherer/hunter economies in the Wet Tropics. Reports indicate that the original Aborigines had been decimated by the mid-1890’s.

As European settlement expanded Aboriginal groups were ‘rounded up’ as legislation was introduced for their “protection”. In 1897 the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act was introduced which was intended to preserve and protect these people. However, it only instilled into them a feeling of inferiority before the white settlers as it removed them from all responsibility and accountability. The Act was repealed in the 1960s.

Before, during and after the Second World War, local Aboriginal groups were concentrated at the Mossman Gorge Reserve. The Daintree people were first moved into a reserve on the northern bank of the Daintree River and during the sixties there were several government relocations.

The Kuku Yalanji people are survivors and have weathered traumatic times, but through this, have managed to tenaciously hang on to what is left of their tribal identity.

Today, the Kuku Yalanji people number approximately 1,000 and make up almost 10% of the Douglas shire population. Their base is at the township of Mossman, where they operate Kuku Yalanji Dreamtime Walks at Mossman Gorge. Their walking tour through the rainforest presents visitors an insight into their heritage, as well as their reliance and empathy with the environment.