Ivaritji

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Ivaritji (c. 1849 – 25 December 1929) was a Kaurna elder from the Adelaide Plains in South Australia and is widely known as the last native speaker of the Kaurna language before its revival in the 1990s. She was also known as Iparrityi, Amelia Taylor, and Amelia Savage.

Name and background
Ivaritji’s Kaurna name means “a gentle, misty rain.” She was born in Port Adelaide, South Australia, to Ityamai-itpina, a Kaurna leader, and Tankaira of Clare. Her childhood name was Itja mau. She had a younger brother, Wima, an older brother named James Phillips, and several siblings who died young. The Kaurna people suffered greatly after European contact, and by the 1850s few Kaurna remained near Adelaide. The group then moved south to the Clarendon district around the Adelaide Hills.

Early life and schooling
When her parents died in the early 1860s, Ivaritji was adopted by Thomas Daily, a Clarendon schoolmaster who distributed rations to Aboriginal people, and his wife. With them she learned to read and write English before leaving to reconnect with other Aboriginal people.

Later years and work
By the late 1800s, Ivaritji and other Kaurna people moved to the Point McLeay Mission, where she cooked for the reverend George Taplin. She was married for a time to George Taylor, an Aboriginal man from Kingston, and later worked as a domestic servant in Norwood. She then moved to the Point Pearce Mission and lived there for many years.

Marriage to Charles Savage and life at Moonta
On 20 December 1920 she married Charles John Savage, who was of African American descent. Because he was not Aboriginal, he could not live with her at the Point Pearce Mission, so they moved to Moonta and lived in a small cottage on an Aboriginal Reserve known as “the Cross Roads.” The government later licensed only a one-acre plot for them and allowed a white farmer to use the rest. Ivaritji sold mats and baskets woven from baling twine to supplement their income, and she became a familiar figure in Moonta.

Later years and death
In 1929 Ivaritji moved to a shared cottage on the Point Pearce reserve because she had trouble supporting herself and was not eligible for an age pension, being considered a ward of the state. She died of pneumonia on Christmas Day, 1929, at the Point Pearce hospital. She left no direct descendants, but there were many Kaurna relatives and descendants through her paternal aunt and other Kaurna people.

Legacy
During the later years of her life, Ivaritji was photographed and interviewed by researchers such as Daisy Bates, John McConnell Black, Herbert Basedow, and Norman Tindale. She shared many Kaurna words, place names, and cultural insights that have helped in the Kaurna language revival. Her knowledge was valued by the Anthropological Society of South Australia, which funded her travel to Adelaide for interviews in 1928.

Honour and remembrance
Whitmore Square in Adelaide’s city center was dual-named in her honour in 2003. A planned “Hotel Ivaritji” beside the square was approved in 2014 but abandoned in 2021. The South Australian Museum also features a display about Ivaritji in its Australian Aboriginal Cultures gallery, ensuring her contributions and the Kaurna language are remembered.