Nyari Morgan

Nyari Morgan is a Manyjilyjarra language speaker born around 1943 at Wanayawarra waterhole, located east outside the Martu native title determination. He is a Martu pujiman (born in the desert). His family walked across the gibber land of the Gibson Desert in the east and into the Little Sandy and Great Sandy Deserts. Nyari’s family were among the last people to come into the desert. Many of his family travelled towards Maralinga in South Australia, and when they came in from the desert in the 1960s, they went to Warburton Mission and Patjarr to the northwest. In the early 1960s, his family had been regularly in contact with patrol officers from the Department of Defence, whose patrols were to ensure that Aboriginal people in South and Western Australia were not at risk from the bombs and rockets being trialled at Maralinga. Nyari had met a patrol in 1963 but had declined an offer to take him to a mission.

A year later, in 1964, when Nyari was about 20 years old, he left his family in the southeast and travelled many 100’s of Kilometres north up to Well 35 on the Canning Stock Route in search of family members. Here his travelling group met another Defence patrol, and he was again invited to be taken to a mission. This time the group decided to go in. The patrol had also contacted Thelma’s group of women and children on the Percival lakes, and Nyari and his family drove into Jigalong Mission with Thelma’s family.

Nyari did not have much family in Jigalong, but he married Kumpaya, who left her husband to be with Nyari, and they had four children. Nyari and Kumpaya worked in the pastoral industry, working on several Pilbara stations in the south around Meekatharra and Wiluna. He eventually moved back to Punmu and then Parnngurr community. Here he met Nola Taylor (Muuki’s sister), married for a second time and had three more children in Parnngurr community.

Nyari is very fit and active, continuing to hunt on foot and by spear into the 1990s. He is hugely knowledgeable and a very senior Lore man. He has supported KJ for many years giving expansively to the younger generations’ knowledge and experience.

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