The Noongar (, also spelt Noongah, Nyungar , Nyoongar, Nyoongah, Nyungah, Nyugah, and Yunga ) are Aboriginal Australian people who live in the south-west corner of Western Australia, from Geraldton on the west coast to Esperance on the south coast. There are 14 different groups in the Noongar cultural bloc: Amangu, Ballardong, Yued, Kaneang, Koreng, Mineng, Njakinjaki, Njunga, Pibelmen, Pindjarup, Wadandi, Whadjuk, Wiilman and Wudjari. The Noongar people refer to their land as Noongar boodja.
The members of the collective Noongar cultural bloc descend from people who spoke several languages and dialects that were often mutually intelligible. What is now classified as the Noongar language is a member of the large Pama–Nyungan language family. Contemporary Noongar speak Australian Aboriginal English laced with Noongar words and occasionally inflected by its grammar. Most contemporary Noongar trace their ancestry to one or more of these groups. In the 2011 Australian census, 10,549 people identified as Indigenous in the south-west of Western Australia. By 2021, this number had increased to 14,355.
The endonym of the Noongar comes from a word originally meaning 'man' or 'person'.
At the time of European settlement, it is believed that the peoples of what became the Noongar community spoke thirteen dialects, of which five still have speakers with some knowledge of their respective versions of the language. No speakers use it over the complete range of everyday speaking situations, and the full resources of the language are available only to a few individuals.
The Noongar peoples have six seasons: Djeran, Makuru, Djilba, Kambarang, Binak, and Bunuru, whose timing is defined by specific observable changes to the environment; a dry period may vary from as few as three to as many as eleven months. Tribes are spread over three different geological systems: the coastal plains, the plateau, and the plateau margins — areas characterized by relatively infertile soil. Casuarina, acacia, and melaleuca thickets predominate in the north, and the south by mulga scrubland, but it also supports dense forest stands. Several rivers run to the coast, and lakes and wetlands provided the Noongar people with their distinctive food and flora.
Generally, Noongar survived by hunting and trapping a variety of game, including kangaroos, possums and wallabies; people close to the coastal zone or riverine systems, spearfished and culled fish in traps. An extensive range of edible wild plants were also available, including yams and wattle seeds. Nuts of the zamia palm, eaten during the Djeran season (April–May) required extensive treatment to remove their toxicity. While there has been some speculation that women may have used them as a form of contraception, there is no direct evidence to support this claim.
Before the arrival of Europeans, the Noongar population has been variously estimated at between 6,000 and some tens of thousands. Colonisation by the British brought both violence and new diseases, taking a heavy toll on the population. The Noongar, like many other Aboriginal peoples, saw the arrival of Europeans as the returning of deceased people, often imagining them as relatives who deserved accommodation. As they approached from the west, the newcomers were called djaanga (or djanak), meaning 'white spirits'.
Initially, relations were generally cordial. Matthew Flinders recognised the success of his three-week sojourn as due in good part to Noongar diplomacy, and Noongar rituals celebrated their reception of the newcomers in a ceremonial form. When settlement became more firmly established, however, misunderstandings over the obligations of reciprocity – some of the most productive land was being taken, especially on the Upper Swan – led to sporadic clashes. An example of such misunderstandings was the Noongar land-management practice of setting fires in early summer, mistakenly seen as an act of hostility by the settlers. Conversely, the Noongar saw the settlers' livestock as fair game to replace the dwindling stocks of native animals shot indiscriminately by settlers. The only area that successfully resisted the usurpation of native land for any time was the area around the Murray River, which effectively blocked expansion of the tiny settlement at Mandurah for almost half a decade.
In June 1832, a Whadjuk leader, Yagan, formerly of good standing among the settler authorities and known in the colony for his handsome bearing, "tall, slender, well-fashioned..of pleasing countenance", was, together with his father Midgegooroo and brother Monday, declared an outlaw after undertaking a series of food raids and a retaliatory murder. Caught and imprisoned, he escaped and was let alone, as though informally reprieved as a native version of William Wallace. His father was caught and killed without trial by a military firing squad. Yagan himself, with a bounty on his head, was ambushed soon afterwards by an 18-year-old settler youth, after he had stopped two settlers and asked for flour. His corpse was decapitated, and the head was sent to England for display in fairgrounds. Yagan is now considered a Noongar hero, by many to have been one of the first Indigenous resistance fighters. Matters escalated with conflicts between the settlement of Thomas Peel and the Pindjarup people, resulting in the Pinjarra massacre. Similarly, struggles with Ballardong people in the Avon Valley continued until violently suppressed by Lieutenant Henry William St Pierre Bunbury. Notwithstanding this violence, extraordinary acts of goodwill existed. In the same year, 1834, the Swan River Noongar couple, Migo and Molly Dobbin, alerted to the fact a European child had gone missing, covered 35 kilometres (22 mi) in 10 hours tracking his spoors, and saved him, at the point of death.
From August 1838, ten Aboriginal prisoners were sent to Rottnest Island (Wadjemup, possibly meaning 'place across the water'). After a short period when both settlers and prisoners occupied the island, the Colonial Secretary announced in June 1839 that the island would become a penal establishment for Aboriginal people and was officially designated as such in 1841. From that time until 1903, when the Indigenous section was closed, Rottnest Island was used as a prison to transfer Aboriginal prisoners "overseas". To "pacify" the Aboriginal population, men were rounded up and chained for offences ranging from spearing livestock, burning the bush, or digging vegetables on what had been their own land. It quickly became a "place of torment, deprivation and death", and it has been estimated that there may be as many as 369 Aboriginal graves on the island, of which five were for prisoners who had been hanged. Except for a short period between 1849 and 1855, during which the prison was closed, some 3,700 Aboriginal men and boys, many of them Noongars, but also many others from all parts of the state, were imprisoned.
A notable incident for the Noongar people in the Western Australian Colony was the arrival of Rosendo Salvado in 1846. Salvado was an advocate for the humane treatment of the Australian Aboriginals at the mission he created at New Norcia, in the territory of the Yued. He provided refuge for the Njunga and he defended many on charges of theft, arguing from church doctrine that theft was not criminal if dictated by dire necessity. While intent on converting, he encouraged the Noongars to maintain their traditional culture.
From 1890 to 1958, the lives and lifestyles of Noongar people were subject to the Native Welfare Act.
By 1915, 15% of Perth's Noongar had been thrust north and interned at the Moore River Native Settlement. Carrolup (later known as Marribank) became the home of up to one-third of the population. It is estimated that 10 to 25% of Noongar children were forcibly adopted during these years, in part of what has become known as the Stolen Generations.
Noongar people live in many country towns throughout the south-west as well as in the major population centres of Perth, Mandurah, Bunbury, Geraldton, Albany and Esperance. Many country Noongar people have developed long-standing relationships with non-Noongar farmers and continue to hunt kangaroo and gather bush tucker (food) as well as teach their children stories about the land. In a few areas in the south-west, visitors can go on bush tucker walks, trying foods such as kangaroo, emu, quandong jam or relish, bush tomatoes, witchetty grub pâté and bush honey.