View full article Lake Killalpannina: contact and culture shock
Issue: Winter 2010
Bethesda Mission Station. Diyari woman and children with the new church at Killalpaninna in the background. Photo courtesy Lutheran Archives
The Diyari people and neighbouring Aboriginal tribes have probably been in the Lower Cooper-Lake Eyre Basin area for at least 12,000 years, living as hunter-gatherers and sharing a rich culture of complex ceremonies, myths and languages in this remote desert country. However, their lives changed irrevocably in the late 1860s when a small band of Lutheran missionaries arrived. By Valmai Hankel
…