Awabakal

Awabakal people
aka: Awabagal, Awaba, Kuri, Minyowa, Minyowie [1]
Mid North Coast bioregion
Hierarchy
Language family:	Pama–Nyungan[2]
Language branch:	Yuin–Kuric
Language group:	Kuri
Group dialects:	Awabakal
Area (approx. 1,800 sq. km)
Bioregion:	Mid North Coast
Location:	Mid North Coast, New South Wales
Coordinates:	33°5′S 151°30′E / 33.083°S 151.500°E / -33.083; 151.500[1]
Other geological:	Lake Macquarie[1]
Notable individuals
Biraban

The Awabakal people /əˈwɒbəɡæl/, are those Aboriginal Australians who identify with or are descended from the Awabakal tribe and its clans, Indigenous to the coastal area of what is now known as the Hunter Region of New South Wales. Their traditional territory spread from Wollombi in the west, to the Lower Hunter River near Newcastle and Lake Macquarie in the north.

The name Kuringgai, also written Guringai, has often been used as a collective denominator of the Awabakal and several other tribes in this belt, but Norman Tindale has challenged it as an arbitrary coinage devised by ethnologist John Fraser in 1892. For Tindale, Kuringgai was synonymous with Awabakal.^[1] Arthur Capell however asserted that there was indeed evidence for a distinct Kuringgai language, which, in Tindale's schema, would imply they were a distinct people from the Awabakal.^[3]