Gunditjmara is formed from two morphemes: Gunditj, a suffix denoting belonging to a particular group or locality, and the noun mara, meaning "man".
Some of the major languages or dialects often grouped under these names were: The Gunditjmara tribal territories extends over an estimated 7,000 square kilometres (2,700 sq mi).
[9] The Gunditjmara believe that the landscape's features mark out the traces of a creator, Budj Bim (meaning "High Head"), who emerged in the form of the volcano previously called Mount Eccles.
In Gunditjmara funeral rites, bodies are enfolded in grass bundles and interred with their heads pointing to the island, with an apotropaic firebrand of native cherry wood.
[13] They spoke distinct dialects,[14] not all of them mutually intelligible,[15] with the three main hordes located around Lake Condah, Port Fairy and Woolsthorpe respectively.
Numerous distinct structures, extending over 100 square kilometres (39 sq mi) of the landscape, are employed for the purpose of catching short-finned eels, the staple of the Gunditjmara diet.
[25] In the wake of the burning of some 7,000 hectares of bushland around Lake Condah and in the Budj Bim National Park, further channel structures came to light.
Professor Peter Kershaw, noted palynologist at Monash University,[29][30][31] as cited by Bruce Pascoe in his best-selling work Dark Emu,[32] found evidence of a sudden change in vegetation consistent with an artificial ponding system, and initial radiocarbon dating of the soil samples suggests the ponds were created up to 8,000 years ago.
[33] The coastal clans, like other tribes on the south-west coast, according to an early settler, Thomas Browne, had a rich fish diet, which included whale (cunderbul) flesh,[m] In a study published in February 2020, new evidence produced by using a form of radiometric dating known as argon-argon dating, showed that both Budj Bim and Tower Hill volcanoes erupted at least 34,000 years ago.
[34] The beginnings of contact with ngamadjidj (white people) date as far back as 1810, when whalers and sealers began to use Portland as a base area for their operations.
Contact exposed the local people to epidemics from new diseases born by whites but otherwise was seasonal, and allowed time for demographic recovery.
Women would fight as well, using their digging sticks which had a dual purpose as a weapon, for defence, for settling disputes and for meting out punishments as part of customary law.
[9] Ian D. Clark has identified 28 massacre sites[36] most of the colonialist slaughters taking place during the Eumerella War, so named when the phrase was used as a chapter heading in the memoirs[37] of the novelist Rolf Boldrewood who squatted 50,000 acres[38] near Port Fairy a decade after the main killings.
A minority view argued by Michael Connors, emerging in the context of Australia's recent History wars argues the figure of 200 dead misinterprets an 1841 report by the Portland Police Magistrate James Blair to Governor Latrobe referring to up to 200 Aboriginals amassing at Convincing Ground, and claims that modern research has fabricated the massacre.
[45] Rev Benjamin Hurst (missionary to the Port Phillip tribe) noted in a Weslayen Mission meeting in 1841 that in the Portland bay area "it was usual for some to go out in parties on the Sabbath with guns, for the ostensible purpose of kangarooing, but, in reality to hunt and kill these miserable beings — the bones and the bodies of the slaughtered blacks had been found — but because the evidence of the native was not admissible in a court, the white murderers had escaped with impunity, and were still pursuing their career of crime and blood".
[t] Resisting dispossession, the Gunditjmara concentrated in the Stony Rises from which they waged guerilla warfare against the pastoralists usurping their lands, raiding their flocks and herds.
The tribe congregated here, until an act was passed to deny right of residence to any "half-caste", resulting in the dispersal of many Gunditjmara kinsfolk, and the loss of their collective traditions, with the Condah mission numbers dropping drastically from 117 to 20.
The Lake Condah Mission lands were also returned to the Gunditjmara on 1 January 1987, when the 53-hectare (130-acre) former reserve was vested to the Kerrup Jmara Elders Corporation.
[59][60] In 1993, the Peek Whurrong members of the Gunditjmara purchased the Deen Maar under the auspices of ATSIC for the Framlingham Aboriginal Trust, with the intention that it become an Indigenous Protected Area (IPA), it was granted this status in 1999.
[citation needed] On 30 March 2007, the Federal Court of Australia under Justice Anthony North determined on recognising the Gunditjmara People's non-exclusive native title rights and interests over 137,000 hectares (340,000 acres) of vacant Crown land, national parks, reserves, rivers, creeks and sea in the Portland region of Victoria's western district.