Martuthuniran

The Martuthunira are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia, whose traditional country centred on the lower reaches of the Fortescue River; their name means those who live around that river. Their language belongs to the Ngayarta branch of the Pama-Nyungan family.

The first recorded encounter with Europeans came on 26 February 1818, when the explorer Phillip Parker King, sailing HMS Mermaid along the north-western coast, met a group paddling mangrove-log rafts between offshore islands and found a camp of about forty people on a nearby island.