Malkanan

The Malkanan, also recorded as Malgana, are an Aboriginal people of the Shark Bay hinterland of Western Australia, holding an inland plateau south of Hamelin Pool and the Wooramel River. Their language belonged to the Kartu branch of the Pama–Nyungan family. In the wet season they dug water soaks and capped them with stones to keep water through the dry months.

Their oral tradition preserves the wreck of the Dutch East India Company ship Zuytdorp on their coast in 1712: survivors camped above the cliffs in houses of salvaged timber and canvas and bartered their stores for native hunting gear.

The story was still being told to British colonists more than a century afterwards. The Malkanan were a small people, sharing customs with the neighbouring Kakarakala and overshadowed by the Tedei and Yingkarta.