BIBBULLMUN, NOT NOONGAR

1. The Primacy of the Endonym: Why Bibbullmun, Not Noongar

The distinction between an authentic sovereign endonym and an externally imposed or elevated descriptive noun touches the very foundation of legal personality and customary land title. Across the indigenous polities of South-West Western Australia, the term Bibbullmun designates the sovereign nation, its unified legal system, its shared cosmological jurisprudence, and its inalienable territorial patrimony. In contrast, the term noongar (rendered orthographically in early archives as nungar, nyungar, or yungur) was never a territorial title, never a national appellation, and never a designation of collective political sovereignty.

In classical First Nations jurisprudence, personal identifiers are distinct from estate title. To ask an elder in 1829 whether they were a "noongar" was grammatically equivalent to asking whether they were a human being or a man. While an individual would respond affirmatively that they were indeed a noongar (a mortal human male, as opposed to a djanga, a white returning spirit), their political allegiance, their landholding estate (kalla-boodja), and their sovereign national identity resided exclusively within the Bibbullmun Sovereign Nation.

The systematic substitution of Noongar for Bibbullmun was neither accidental nor benign. It formed the centerpiece of a twentieth-century colonial administrative project designed to erase distinct regional subnations, aggregate displaced families into state-run carceral reserves, and eliminate the localised, hereditary clan estates that form the bedrock of unextinguished customary allodial title.

2. The Empirical Lexicographical Audit (1831–1851): Five Early Colonial Dictionaries

Before the Western Australian colonial government established centralised administrative controls over First Nations populations, early British colonial officers, naval surgeons, interpreters, and missionary linguists compiled direct phonetic records of South-West languages. Every single early recorder confirmed that noongar was strictly a common noun for "man":

• Scott Nind (1831): Serving as colonial surgeon at King George's Sound from 1827 to 1829, Nind compiled the earliest comprehensive vocabulary published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London. Nind recorded the term Yungur strictly as: "Yungur — A Man. Also a male kangaroo."[1] Nind documented regional custodial groups (such as the Meern-anger, Weil, and Corine), demonstrating that Yungur operated as a generic noun rather than a regional political umbrella.
• Francis Armstrong (1836): As official government interpreter, Armstrong published an extensive ethnographic and linguistic survey in The Perth Gazette. Armstrong defined the term precisely: "Noongar — A male person of the native race."[2] Armstrong recorded that political and territorial identity was structured along hereditary clan lines.
• George Grey (1840): Following extensive explorations throughout the South-West, Captain George Grey published his official two-volume vocabulary. Grey’s definition is explicit: "Nungar — A man; a male human being. Used in opposition to 'djanga', white spirit or European."[3] Grey noted that the term conveyed no tribal, national, or geographic jurisdiction.
• Charles Symmons (1841): Serving as Protector of Aborigines, Symmons published an official grammatical treatise in the Government Gazette, recording: "Noongar — Man, human being. Not used as a territorial or national tribal title."[4]
• George Fletcher Moore (1842): Moore, the Advocate-General of the Swan River Colony, compiled what remains the authoritative 1842 colonial dictionary. Moore provided decisive lexicographical proof by defining both terms in the same text:
  • "Nungar — A man; a person."[5]
  • "Bibulmun — The name of the tribe or people inhabiting the south-western forest districts."[5]

Subsequent missionary vocabularies confirmed this exact distinction. Bishop John Brady in 1845 recorded "Ngangar, Noongar — Homo, a man,"[6] while the Benedictine founder of New Norcia, Rosendo Salvado, confirmed that northern dialects utilised nungar strictly to distinguish human beings from spirits and fauna.[7] Not a single colonial lexicon compiled prior to 1900 ever identified Noongar as a sovereign nation or national endonym.

3. Phonological Science & Etymology: Bibul and the Living Waters

The linguistic integrity of Bibbullmun is grounded in the structural phonology of South-West languages. In his landmark linguistic survey for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, linguist Wilfrid H. Douglas demonstrated that South-West phonology contains no phonemic distinction between voiced and voiceless bilabial stops (/b/ and /p/).[8]

In the speech of First Nations elders, the sounds [b] and [p] are non-contrastive allophones occurring in free variation. Consequently, early colonial orthographies that transcribed the forest people as Bibulmun (Moore 1842), Bibbulmun (Bates 1912), or Pibelmen (Tindale 1974) were recording the identical phonetic word.[8] The coastal dialect groups favoured the softer voiced [b], whereas inland dialects frequently transcribed the fortis voiceless [p]. Both forms are linguistically identical in classical customary law.[9]

Etymologically, Bibbullmun is derived from the sacred paperbark tree (Melaleuca rhaphiophylla and Melaleuca preissiana), known in customary tongue as bibul. As documented by Daisy Bates, "Bibbul signifies paperbark, and mun means people."[11] The paperbark tree flourished across the permanent freshwater river systems, wetlands, and coastal estuaries that sustained the sovereign civilisation of the South-West. The paperbark supplied the structural material for waterproof winter dwellings (mia-mias), infant cradle-wraps, surgical bandages, fire-carrying torches, and food steaming pits. To be Bibbullmun was to be of the Paperbark Country—the People of the Living Waters.[11]

4. Ethnohistorical Continuity: Daisy Bates MS 365, Clan Hearths & Dual Moieties

Between 1904 and 1912, ethnographer Daisy Bates conducted systematic field interviews across South-West Western Australia with surviving elders who had lived under unbroken customary law prior to widespread pastoral dispossession. Her extensive research, preserved in the National Library of Australia as MS 365, confirmed that the Bibbullmun constituted the sovereign national confederacy of the South-West.[10]

Bates recorded that the Bibbullmun nation was bound together by an immutable constitutional framework of dual exogamous moieties: Wordungmat (the Crow / Raven moiety) and Manitchmat (the White Cockatoo moiety).[10] Every member of the Bibbullmun nation inherited their moiety identity, which governed marriage alliances, hunting obligations, inter-estate trade ceremonies, and judicial disputes under customary law.[12]

Furthermore, land tenure across Bibbullmun country was rooted in the kalla-boodja (the localised family hearth and clan estate).[12] As documented by Jesse Hammond from conversations with mid-19th-century elders, sovereign rights over specific tracts of river country, estuarine fish traps, gnamma water-holes, and root-harvesting grounds were held under inalienable allodial title by localised clan groups.[12] Ethel Hassell confirmed identical localised clan estate boundaries and judicial responsibilities across the Wheelman and southern ranges.[13] Under customary law, no regional headman or single entity possessed the legal power to alienate, surrender, or extinguish title to another group's kalla-boodja.[15]

6. The 20th-Century Carceral Manufacture of "Noongar": Chief Protector Neville & the Aborigines Act 1905

If Bibbullmun was the universal sovereign national endonym and noongar was merely a descriptive noun, how did Noongar become the prevailing label in contemporary discourse? The answer lies in the administrative and carceral policies of the Western Australian State Government during the early twentieth century.

Following the 1904 Roth Royal Commission on the Condition of the Natives,[16] the Western Australian Parliament enacted the draconian Aborigines Act 1905 (WA).[17] This statute appointed the Chief Protector of Aborigines as the legal guardian of all Aboriginal children up to the age of 21 and granted the department absolute power to forcibly remove First Nations families from their ancestral lands into carceral state settlements.[17]

Under the long tenure of Chief Protector A.O. Neville (1915–1940), the state systematically closed localised town reserves and forced hundreds of families into two major segregated institutions: Moore River Native Settlement (Mogumber) in the north and Carrolup Native Settlement in the south.[18] As documented by historian Anna Haebich, Neville was committed to a policy of biological and cultural assimilation, explicitly designed to "breed out the colour" and eliminate distinct tribal land claims.[18][20]

Inside the crowded dormitories of Moore River and Carrolup, families who had previously maintained distinct clan dialects and specific kalla-boodja estates were subjected to uniform penal discipline. In this multi-dialect internment environment, inmates utilised the common colloquial noun noongar ("one of our own people / human beings", as opposed to the white superintendents) as an informal vernacular.[19] Neville and subsequent welfare administrators seized upon this colloquialism, institutionalising "Noongar" as a bureaucratic catch-all category. By erasing the sovereign name Bibbullmun and substituting a generic administrative umbrella, the state sought to obscure the existence of organised sovereign subnations and facilitate the extinguishment of traditional land tenure.[20]

7. Contemporary Native Title Jurisprudence & the Fallacy of Statutory Umbrellas

The bureaucratic conflation initiated by A.O. Neville was reinforced late in the twentieth century through the statutory mechanisms of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth).[21] To manage overlapping claims and minimize transactional costs, government agencies and statutory land councils encouraged the consolidation of distinct clan estates into a single monolithic legal entity: the Single Noongar Claim.[25]

In Bennell v State of Western Australia (2006), Justice Wilcox of the Federal Court recognised the existence of a single unified community in the Perth metropolitan area under native title law.[22] However, on appeal in Bodney v Bennell (2008), the Full Federal Court overturned this finding, emphasising that native title requires rigorous proof of continuous observance of localised traditional laws and customs by specific clan descendants, rather than an aggregated modern community.[23]

Legal scholars Samantha Hepburn and Glen Kelly have demonstrated that statutory native title operates as a creature of municipal law that frequently forces disparate traditional groups into synthetic regional entities to achieve administrative finality.[24][25] This reached its culmination in the South West Native Title Settlement and the Noongar (Koorah, Nitja, Boordahwan) (Recognition) Act 2016 (WA).[26] Under this state statute, "Noongar" was formally recognised as a single collective entity specifically in exchange for the full statutory surrender and extinguishment of all underlying native title claims across 200,000 km². The state-sponsored elevation of the umbrella term Noongar served a clear legal purpose: to facilitate an all-encompassing surrender that would be legally impossible if the inalienable, localised allodial title of the sovereign Bibbullmun subnations were recognised.[24]

8. Unceded Sovereignty & Constitutional Obligations: Section 70 and International Law

The sovereign standing of the Bibbullmun Sovereign Nation is not a grant from the British Crown or the Western Australian Parliament; it is inherent, primordial, and unceded. When the British Imperial Parliament enacted the Western Australia Constitution Act 1890 (Imp), granting responsible self-government to the colony, it included a mandatory imperial condition precedent: Section 70 of the Constitution Act 1889 (WA).[27][28]

Section 70 required the Western Australian Colonial Government to pay each year to an independent Aborigines Protection Board one percent of the gross colonial revenue (or a minimum of £5,000) for the welfare, sustenance, and land-compensation of First Nations custodians.[27] In 1897, eager to seize control of the surging gold-rush revenues, the Forrest colonial ministry passed fraudulent repeal legislation (the Aborigines Act 1897 and later the Constitution Act Amendment Act 1905) without obtaining proper Imperial Royal Assent.[29] As legal scholar P.W. Johnston established in his definitive analysis, the purported repeal of Section 70 constituted a profound constitutional breach of trust that has never been lawfully cured.[29]

Under the doctrine established by the High Court of Australia in Mabo v Queensland [No 2] (1992), radical Crown title is burdened by pre-existing customary allodial land rights.[30] Furthermore, under international law, as codified in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), Indigenous nations possess the inalienable right to self-determination, the maintenance of distinct political institutions, and sovereign authority over traditional lands, territories, and resources.[31] Municipal administrative labels such as "Noongar" cannot alter, diminish, or extinguish the unceded radical sovereignty of the Bibbullmun Sovereign Nation.

9. Primary Archival Lexicographical Concordance Table

The following empirical concordance matrix cross-references the earliest published vocabularies and ethnographies of South-West Western Australia, documenting the exact verbatim recorded term, definition, and archival locator: