The Yapurarra or Jaburara, also rendered Yaburara, are an Aboriginal Australian people whose traditional lands are in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and the Dampier Archipelago.
[1] The Jaburara owned some 520 square kilometres (200 sq mi) of territory from around Dampier, Burrup, Nichol Bay and the peninsula northwards to the Dolphin and Legendre islands.
[2] During one of Phillip Parker King's voyages on HMS Mermaid to survey the Australian coast, an attempt was made to communicate in February 1817 with members of the tribe, three of whom had been sighted off-shore floating on a log in the vicinity of present-day Karratha.
The intermediary used was the ship's interpreter Bungaree, who, speaking the Broken Bay Dharug language could not understand them, but managed to calm their anxieties by undressing and showing he wore ritual scars.
Two parties, made up of north coast pearlers and settler pastoralists, had been given permission by the district authority to apply lethal force "with discretion and judgement",[6] and they attacked Jaburara encampments in a pincer movement.