Paakantyi
indigenous people in New South Wales, Australia
The Paakantyi, or Barkindji or Barkandji, are Australian Aboriginal people who live along the Darling River, known to them as the Baaka, in Far West New South Wales, Australia.
Name
The ethnonym Paakantyi means "River people", formed from paaka river and the suffix -ntyi, meaning "belonging to", thus "belonging to the river". They refer to themselves as wiimpatya. The name Paakantyi therefore simply means the River People.
Language
Traditionally they speak the Paakantyi language of the Pama–Nyungan family, and one of the three major Aboriginal languages for the people of the current Broken Hill region.
The major work on the Paakantyi language has been that of the late linguist Luise Hercus.
Country
The Paakantyi dwelt along the Darling River, from Wilcannia downstream almost to the Avoca Homestead Complex near Wentworth. Inland on either side of the Darling, their territory extended to a distance of roughly 20 to 30 miles (32–48 km). According to Norman Tindale, they inhabited an area of some 7,500 square miles (19,000 km2). They lived also in the back country from the river, around the Paroo River and Broken Hill.
The public source identifies “Paakantyi” as indigenous people in New South Wales, Australia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Paakantyi, indigenous and people.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16211292.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paakantyi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.