Spinifex people
[5] They maintain in large part their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle within the territory,[6] over which their claims to native title in Australia and associated collective rights were recognised by a 28 November 2000 Federal Court decision.
[16] The gathered grass was flailed with a stick to obtain spinifex dust, which then was winnowed and "yandied", yandi referring to a luandja, a softwood winnowing dish for grass seed:[17] the cleaned seeds were then tipped into another type of dish, called ivirra,[18][19] worked further with a particular rocking movement and shaking and then heated over stone to yield around 8 cubic metres yielding 600 grams.
[25] In evaluating the Pila Nguru claim to native title in 2001, the Federal Court of Australia's Chief Justice Michael Black stated that archaeological evidence indicated a nomadic presence in the Western desert dating back some 20,000 years.
[27] According to Scott Cane the residual debris of artifact use peppering the desert landscape is extremely dense, attesting to a very long period of habitation.
By the 1930s, profiting from the proximity of the Trans-Australian Railway (T.A.R), which had been completed just over a decade earlier, missionaries strove to undertake evangelistic pastoral work in the area, establishing a mission in Warburton but the extremities of trying to live there rendered their activities difficult, and the native lifestyle managed to survive, with the retention of many customary ways.
[citation needed] When graded roads were built for the Giles Weather Station (part of the Weapons Research Establishment) during 1952–1955, officials learned that Aboriginal people – probably then around 150 – lived west of the sites.
Scouting just east of this area to find suitable locations for radiation sensors that would measure the fallout, Len Beadell records stumbling on an "Aboriginal Stonehenge", a geometrical pattern of upturned shale slabs extending for a distance of 60 metres (200 ft).
In the later stages of the bomb trials, MacDougall discovered that up to 40 Spinifex people may have been hunting over the eastern portion of the prohibited Maralinga area while the tests were being conducted, moving as far east as Vokes Hill and Waldana.
Scott Cane's otherwise definitive native title study, Pila Nguru (2000), contained almost no details as to how bomb testing radiation affected the Spinifex people.
[31] The Spinifex people were the second group in Western Australia to receive recognition of their land rights in 2000,[32] in accordance with Section 87 (agreement) of the Commonwealth Native Title Act 1993.
The genre of what the Pila Nguru call "government paintings" were visual documents created to furnish evidence of their land title, to be produced in court.
[7] Their boldly-coloured "dot paintings" are not the usual polished commodities produced by many northern tribes for sale to a non-Aboriginal art market, but are authentic works that the Spinifex People have made for their own purposes.
