Yindjibarndi people
The Yindjibarndi are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. They form the majority of Aboriginal people around Roebourne (the Millstream area). Their traditional lands lie around the Fortescue River. Language. Yindjibarndi, with around 1000 speakers has been called the most innovative descendant of then proto-Ngayarta language. It is mutually intelligible with Kurruma. Due to their displacement in the colonisation process which forced them into Roebourne, many speakers are Ngarluma people who have adopted Yindjibarndi. Their spatial concepts regarding landscape of do not translate with any equivalent conceptual extension into English. Ecology. Traditionally , until the arrival of Europeans, the Yindjibarndi lived along the middle sector of the valley through which the Fortescue River runs, and the nearby uplands. Beginning in the 1860s pastoralists established cattle stations on their homeland, and the Yindjibarndi were herded into settlements. Today most of them are congregated in and around the traditional Ngarluma territory whose centre is Roebourne. Native title. The mining magnate Andrew Forrest head of Fortescue Metals Group, which works the Solomon iron ore hub on the Yindjibarndi's traditional land, waged a 14-year legal battle to assert the company's rights against the people 's aspirations to have native title. In 2017, the Federal Court of Australia recognised that the Yindjibarndi had exclusive rights over some , and the court reaffirmed its decision again in 2020 when FMG appealed to have the determination overturned.