Editing Pygmy peoples (section)

=== Disputed presence in Australia ===
Australian anthropologist [[Norman Tindale]] and American anthropologist [[Joseph Birdsell]] suggested there were 12 Negrito-like tribes of short-statured [[Aboriginal Australians|Aboriginal]] peoples living on the coastal and rainforest areas around [[Cairns]] on the lands of the [[Mbabaram people]] and [[Djabugay]] people.<ref>{{Cite web |author-link=Norman Tindale |last=Tindale |first=Norman B. |title=Tjapukai (QLD) |date=16 December 2003 |orig-date=Reproduced from N.B. Tindale's ''Aboriginal Tribes of Australia'' (1974) |website=Tindale's Catalogue of Australian Aboriginal Tribes |publisher=[[South Australian Museum]] |url=http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/orig/tindale/hdms/tindaletribes/tjapukai.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080726175601/http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/orig/tindale/HDMS/tindaletribes/tjapukai.htm |archive-date=2008-07-26 }}</ref><ref>{{cite Q |Q128257949 |mode=cs1 |chapter=Tjapukai (QLD)}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |author-link=Colin Groves |last=Groves |first=Colin |title=Australia for the Australians |journal=Australian Humanities Review |date=June 2002 |issue=26 |url=http://australianhumanitiesreview.org/2002/06/01/australia-for-the-australians/ |access-date=2022-07-01 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090115141723/http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-June-2002/groves.html |archive-date=2009-01-15}} <!-- OLD URL http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-June-2002/groves.html --></ref> Birdsell found that the average adult male height of Aboriginal people in this region was significantly less than that of other Aboriginal Australian groups; however, it was still greater than the maximum height for classification as a pygmy people, so the term ''pygmy'' may be considered a misnomer.<ref>{{Cite journal|author-link=Peter Hiscock|last=Hiscock|first=Peter |date=2005|title=The extinction of rigour: a comment on 'The extinction of the Australian Pygmies' by Keith Windschuttle and Tim Gillin|jstor=24046693|journal=[[Aboriginal History]]|volume=29|pages=142–148}}</ref> He called this short-statured group ''Barrineans'', after [[Lake Barrine]].

[[File:Aboriginal encampment in rainforest behind Cairns, 1890.jpg|thumb|Aboriginal encampment in rainforest behind Cairns, 1890. This is the photograph (attributed to A. Atkinson) found by Norman Tindale in 1938, which sent him and Joseph Birdsell in search of the people depicted. He identified the location by the wild banana leaves on the roof of the hut.]]

Birdsell classified Aboriginal Australians into three major groups, mixed together to varying degrees: the Carpentarians, best represented in [[Arnhem Land]]; the Murrayans, centred in southeastern Australia; and the Barrineans. He argued that people related to Oceanic Negritos were the first arrivals, and had been absorbed or replaced over time by later incoming peoples; the present-day Barrineans retained the greatest proportion of ancestry from this original Negrito group, "[b]ut this is not to say that the Barrineans are Negritos&nbsp;... the Negritic component is clearly subordinate, and&nbsp;... the preponderant element is Murrayian."<ref>{{cite journal |author-link=Joseph Birdsell |last=Birdsell |first=Joseph |date=1967 |title=Preliminary Data on the Trihybrid Origin of the Australian Aborigines |journal=Archaeology & Physical Anthropology in Oceania |volume=2 |issue=2}}</ref> This trihybrid model is generally considered defunct today; craniometric,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Larnach |first1=Neil William George |last2=Macintosh |first2=S. L. |date=1970 |title=The Craniology of the Aborigines of Queensland |publisher=University of Sydney |isbn=0855570016}}</ref> genetic,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=McAllister |first1=Peter |last2=Nagle |first2=Nano |last3=Mitchell |first3=Robert John |display-authors=etal|title=The Australian Barrineans and Their Relationship to Southeast Asian Negritos: An Investigation using Mitochondrial Genomics |date=1 June 2013 |journal=Human Biology |volume=85 |issue=1 |pages=485–94 |doi=10.3378/027.085.0322|pmid=24297238|hdl=10072/57320|s2cid=33171899|hdl-access=free}}</ref> and linguistic<ref>{{cite book |last=Dixon |first=R. M. W. |title=The Languages of Australia |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |date=1980 |page=262 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R5w8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA262 |isbn=9780521294508}}</ref> evidence does not support a separate origin of Barrinean or other Aboriginal groups, and physical differences between Aboriginal groups can be explained by adaptation to differing environments.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Gilligan| first1=Ian| last2=Bulbeck| first2=David| date=2007 |title=Environment and morphology in Australian Aborigines: A re-analysis of the Birdsell database |journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology |volume=134|issue=1|pmid=17568440 | doi=10.1002/ajpa.20640 | pages=75–91}}</ref>

In 2002, the purported existence of short-statured people in Queensland was brought into the public eye by [[Keith Windschuttle]] and Tim Gillin{{clarify|date=June 2020}} in an article published by the [[right-wing]] [[Quadrant (magazine)|''Quadrant'' magazine]] (edited by Windschuttle himself). The authors argued that these people were evidence for a distinct Negrito population in support of Birdsell's theory, and claimed that "the fact that the Australian pygmies have been so thoroughly expunged from public memory suggests an indecent concurrence between scholarly and political interests", because evidence of descent from earlier or later waves of origin could lead to conflicting claims of priority by Aboriginal people and hence pose a threat to political co-operation among them.<ref name="McNiven & Russell">{{cite book |last1=McNiven |first1=Ian J. |last2=Russell |first2=Lynette |title=Appropriated Pasts: Indigenous Peoples and the Colonial Culture of Archaeology |date=2005 |publisher=AltaMira Press |location=Lanham, Md. |isbn=0-7591-0906-0 |pages=90–92 |edition=2nd |url=https://archive.org/stream/appropriatedpast00ianj#page/90/mode/2up/search/windschuttle+and+gillin |url-access=registration}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2002/06/the-extinction-of-the-australian-pygmies/|title=The extinction of the Australian pygmies|last=Windschuttle|first=Keith|date=1 June 2002|website=[[Quadrant magazine]]|publisher=Quadrant Magazine Ltd.|access-date=31 January 2019}}</ref> This and other publications promoting the trihybrid model drew several responses, which went over the current scientific evidence against the theory, and suggested that attempts to revive the theory were motivated by an agenda of undermining Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander claims to [[Native title in Australia|native title]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://theconversation.com/who-we-should-recognise-as-first-australians-in-the-constitution-38714|title=Who we should recognise as First Australians in the constitution|last=Westaway|first=Michael|date=13 March 2015|website=[[The Conversation (website)|The Conversation]]|publisher=[[The Conversation Media Group]]|access-date=31 January 2019}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Ross|first=Anne|date=June 2010|title=Constant Resurrection: The Trihybrid Model and the Politicisation of Australian Archaeology|jstor=27821565|journal=[[Australian Archaeology]]|volume=70|issue=1|pages=55–67|doi=10.1080/03122417.2010.11681911|s2cid=141126928}}</ref>

Some Aboriginal [[oral histories]] and [[oral tradition]]s from Queensland tell of "little red men". In 1957 a member of the Jinibara (the [[Dalla people]]) tribe of SE Queensland, Gaiarbau, who was born in 1873 and had lived for many years traditionally with his tribe, said that he knew of the "existence of these "little people – the Dinderi", also known as "Dimbilum", "Danagalalangur" and "Kandju". Gaiarbau claims he saw members of a "tribe of small people&nbsp;... and said they were like dwarfs&nbsp;... and&nbsp;... not&nbsp;... any of them stood five feet [1.5m]."<ref name="Winterbotham, Lindsay P. 1957">{{cite web |url= https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/36299846?q&versionId=46655024 |title=Gaiarbau's story of the Jinibara tribe of South East Queensland and its neighbours |author=Winterbotham, Lindsay P.|date=1957 }}</ref> The Dinderi are also recorded in other stories, such as one concerning a [[platypus]] myth<ref>{{cite book |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=e6WBCgAAQBAJ |title=Aboriginal Pathways: in Southeast Queensland and the Richmond River |author=John Gladstone Steele|date=1983 |publisher=Univ. of Queensland Press |isbn=9780702257421 }}</ref> and another, ''The Dinderi and Gujum - The Legend of the Stones of the Mary River''.<ref>{{cite web | title=Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Service | website=Queensland Health | date=30 October 2017 | url=https://www.health.qld.gov.au/sunshinecoast/html/atsi-health-serv | access-date=16 June 2020}} [https://www.health.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/file/0022/360634/lh-3.mp3 Audio]</ref>

Susan McIntyre-Tamwoy, archaeologist and adjunct professor at [[James Cook University]], has written<ref>{{cite thesis |url= http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/8183 |title= Red devils and white men|author=McIntyre-Tamwoy, Susan |date=2000 |publisher=PhD thesis, James Cook University|doi= 10.25903/db9w-9r36}}</ref> of the northern [[Cape York Peninsula|Cape York]] Aboriginal people's belief of the ''bipotaim'', which is when "the landscape as we know it today was created". ''Bipotaim'' was formed "before people, although not perhaps before the short people or the red devils as these were also here before people".<ref>{{cite thesis |url= http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/8183 |title= Red devils and white men|author=McIntyre-Tamwoy, Susan |date=2000 |page=187|publisher=PhD thesis, James Cook University|doi= 10.25903/db9w-9r36}}</ref> She writes, "many ethnographers recorded stories of 'short people' or what they referred to as 'pygmy tribes{{'"}}, such as [[Lindsey Page Winterbotham]].<ref>{{cite thesis |url= http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/8183 |title= Red devils and white men|author=McIntyre-Tamwoy, Susan |date=2000 |page=87|publisher=PhD thesis, James Cook University|doi= 10.25903/db9w-9r36}}</ref><ref name="Winterbotham, Lindsay P. 1957"/> She used information collected both through oral accounts (including those of [[Injinoo]] people), observation and archival research.<ref>{{cite thesis |url= http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/8183 |title= Red devils and white men|author=McIntyre-Tamwoy, Susan |date=2000 |pages=9–10|publisher=PhD thesis, James Cook University|doi= 10.25903/db9w-9r36}}</ref> McIntyre-Tamwoy recounts a ''bipotaim'' story: "We are the short people [pygmies?]. Red devils occupy parts of the adjacent stony coast but our home is here in the sand dunes and forest. Before the Marakai ['white people'] came to our land the people were plentiful and they roamed the land. They understood the land and called out in the language of the country to seek permission, as they should&nbsp;...".<ref>{{cite thesis |url= http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/8183 |title= Red devils and white men|author=McIntyre-Tamwoy, Susan |date=2000 |page=183|publisher=PhD thesis, James Cook University|doi= 10.25903/db9w-9r36}}</ref>

According to Nathan Sentance, a librarian from the indigenous Wiradjuri nation employed by the Australian National Museum, there is no known archaeological or biological evidence such a people existed. Sentance claims it is a myth used to justify the [[colonisation of Australia]] as well as other countries by Europeans.<ref>{{cite web | title=Dismantling the Australian pygmy people myth | website=The Australian Museum | url=https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/first-nations/debunking-australian-pygmy-people-myth/ | access-date=16 June 2020}}</ref>