Qualla: Paakantyi https://qualla.com/paakantyi en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:28 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/m/n/paakantyi-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Paakantyi https://qualla.com/paakantyi Paakantyi: Introduction https://qualla.com/paakantyi/ Photo credit EA Roberts, Public domain. Their name says exactly who they are. Paaka means river, and the suffix -ntyi means belonging to, so Paakantyi means, simply, the people who belong to the river. The river is the Darling, which the Paakantyi call the Baaka, and for thousands of years it has been the spine of their world, threading life through the brick-red sandhills and grey clay flats of Far West New South Wales. They are also known as the Barkindji or Barkandji, and they are not a people of the past tense. They are here, the river people still, and their story is one of holding on.

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Image: EA Roberts | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/m/n/paakantyi-wp/r4mn-paakantyi-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Paakantyi: Belonging to the River https://qualla.com/paakantyi/ Photo credit EA Roberts, Public domain. The Paakantyi homeland follows the Baaka from around Wilcannia downstream, reaching some twenty to thirty miles inland on either bank, and stretching out to the country around the Paroo River and Broken Hill. In their own language they call themselves wiimpatya. The land is gener...

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Image: EA Roberts | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/m/n/paakantyi-wp/r4mn-paakantyi-belonging-to-the-river.mp3 0:06 2 full Paakantyi: The Serpent in the Waterholes https://qualla.com/paakantyi/ Photo credit EA Roberts, Public domain. In Paakantyi understanding, the river and its country were shaped by Ngatji, the Rainbow Serpent of the Dreaming. Ngatji is not a story finished long ago but a presence that endures, believed to travel underground from waterhole to waterhole, and not to be disturbed. When a sudde...

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Image: EA Roberts | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/m/n/paakantyi-wp/r4mn-paakantyi-the-serpent-in-the-waterholes.mp3 0:06 3 full Paakantyi: When the River Was Taken https://qualla.com/paakantyi/ Photo credit EA Roberts, Public domain. Colonisation came hard to the Baaka. Cattle and sheep stripped the banks, rabbits arrived in the 1890s, and drought and introduced fish damaged a river system that had sustained people for millennia. Disease cut through the communities; an epidemic around 1850 is remembered by el...

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Image: EA Roberts | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/m/n/paakantyi-wp/r4mn-paakantyi-when-the-river-was-taken.mp3 0:06 4 full Paakantyi: A Sleeping Language, Waking https://qualla.com/paakantyi/ Photo credit EA Roberts, Public domain. By the mid-twentieth century outsiders were calling the Paakantyi a vanishing people, and their language was down to a handful of fluent speakers. But a language is not gone while anyone is willing to fight for it. Community members describe their tongue not as dead but as sleepi...

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Image: EA Roberts | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/m/n/paakantyi-wp/r4mn-paakantyi-a-sleeping-language-waking.mp3 0:06 5 full Paakantyi: Recognised at Last https://qualla.com/paakantyi/ Photo credit EA Roberts, Public domain. The fight reached a milestone in court. The Barkindji first lodged their native title claim in 1997, gathering testimony from traditional owners alongside the work of anthropologists, historians and linguists. Eighteen years later, on 16 June 2015, Federal Court judge Jayne Jagot...

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Image: EA Roberts | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/m/n/paakantyi-wp/r4mn-paakantyi-recognised-at-last.mp3 0:06 6 full