Pitapita
The Pitapita, also known as Pitta Pitta, are an Aboriginal Australian people from Queensland. They spoke Pitapita, a Karnic language. Pitapita is the best-described dialect of an eastern group that also included Rangwa, Kunkalanya, Ngulupulu, and Ringa-Ringa, and they are closely related to a western Karnic group that includes Wangkajutjuru (Wangka-Yutjurru) and Lhanima.
Their precise traditional country is not clearly fixed in early records. Walter Roth’s detailed accounts were hard to interpret, so Norman Tindale later estimated that the Pitapita lived in the Shire of Boulia, from Fort William in the north, through Boulia and about 50 miles south, covering roughly 2,700 square miles (about 7,000 square kilometers). Their land was next to the Wanggamala people.
Opening the country to white settlement displaced many tribes, and people suffered from privation, disease, alcohol, and lead exposure. By Roth’s time, the Pitapita population was already in decline, with estimates suggesting perhaps no more than 200 people remained in the district.
In 2012, the Federal Court awarded the Pitapita native title rights to about 30,000 square kilometers (12,000 square miles) of land in the Boulia region.
The Pitapita practiced initiation rites that included circumcision and subincision.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 14:01 (CET).