Aboriginal history

Aboriginal association with the Great Victoria Desert can be traced back to around 20-24,000 years ago. These Aboriginal people belong to the Western Desert Culture Bloc, which all share very close similarities in language, dreaming (Tjukurpa) and social structure.
Over thousands of years Aboriginal people developed an intimate knowledge of the Great Victoria desert and its most important resource for life – water. There are numerous rockholes, soaks and wells holding varying amounts of water. Family groups would range all across the desert, damming water on claypans and finding water in the roots of trees like black oaks. In drier seasons they would fall back on more reliable sources like Ooldea soak. Family groups from Pitjantjatjara Lands in the north would take up to two years to traverse the desert south to Ooldea according to Daisy Bates. When they camped at the soak they would camp according to from where they came. Those from the north would camp north of the soak, those from the south to the south etc. Different anthropologists in the past have tried to classify who exactly came from where, but this has proved fruitless as the boundaries were liquid and changed with seasons. Different groups moved into other groups territory and visa versa.

During the 1950s and 60s many desert dwellers were removed due to rocket testing from Woomera and nuclear weapons testing at Emu and Maralinga. Some people from the Musgrave Ranges ended up settling at Yalata at the head of the Great Australian Bight, where Pitjantjatjara is the spoken language. There are major Aboriginal communities at Oak Valley and Tjuntjuntjara in the south, Warburton and Cosmo Newberry in the West, various communities in the north on the AP lands, like Mimili in the Everard Ranges and Ernabella in the Musgraves. There are also numerous outstations, and Aboriginal Business roads connecting both population centres and areas of cultural significance.

Large tracts of the Great Victoria Desert are under the tenure of several land holding Aboriginal bodies. The northern part of the desert is held by Anangu Pitjantjatjara who hold inalienable freehold title under the Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Act 1981. The Maralinga Tjarutja Land Rights Bill 1983 granted inalienable title to 7.74 million hectares of Great Victoria Desert land to traditional owners displaced by the Maralinga Nuclear tests. Parts of the north western sector of the desert falls within Ngaanyatjarra Lands. In 2000 the Spinifex people or Pila Nguru based at Tjuntjuntjara were granted 55,000 square kilometres of land by the Federal Court. Aboriginal people have a joint management arrangement on Conservation reserves in the desert. The Tjuntjuntjara community operate the Ilkurka Roadhouse which is approximately half way along the Ann Beadell highway in the middle of the Great Victoria Desert.