Kaurna Meyunna Yerta ‘Kaurna Country’

Kaurna Meyunna are the Aboriginal people of the Adelaide region. Kaurna Meyunna Yerta the Kaurna peoples’ traditional tribal land, or Country, extends from Cape Jervis to the south of Adelaide to Crystal Brook to the north, and from the Mount Lofty Ranges to the coast of Gulf Saint Vincent.

Country is more than land as Karl Winda Telfer, senior custodian, Mullawirra and Mullamai clans, explains:

Ngankitta yerta, Mother Earth Country, is my place of spiritual birth, it is my unfolding connection to my ancestral dreaming and totem design. This lives within me as it does in star, tree, rock, river, animal, bird and seed; same thing. When I am sleeping, tree is still working for me, river still working for me and rock is still waiting to be born. My Country is a song, a song that can be heard by all if you can listen.

The map below shows the geographic area as defined for the Kaurna People’s Native Title Claim which was lodged in October 2000. There is broad community acceptance of this definition of Kaurna Country. The Kaurna people, as a nation, still do not have legal title to any of their ancestral lands.