Jindyworobak Movement

The Jindyworobak Movement was a nationalistic Australian literary movement whose white members sought to promote indigenous Australian ideas and customs, particularly in poetry. They were active from the 1930s to around the 1950s. The movement intended to combat the influx of "alien" culture, which was threatening local art.

The Jindyworobak movement was begun in Adelaide during 1937 by the poet Rex Ingamells and the other members of the Jindyworobak club. The name was taken from a Woiwurrung word meaning "to join" or "to annex", which had been used by the poet and novelist James Devaney in his 1929 book The Vanished Tribes. "Jindyworobak" is supposedly from the phrase jindi woroback of the Woiwurrung language, formerly spoken around Melbourne. This is said to have been sourced by Devaney from a 19th century vocabulary. Ingamells is said to have chosen the word to produce an 'aboriginal' word both 'outlandish' (arresting) and symbolic. Sometimes this name was shortened to "Jindy" or "Jindys" to describe members of the group.

Ingamells first outlined the movements aims with an address entitled, On Environmental Values (1937), expanding this to Conditional Culture and forming the club later that year. Inspiration had been found in P. R. Stephensen's The Foundations of Culture in Australia (1936). In 1938, the first Jindyworobak Anthology (1938–1953) was published; the Jindyworobak Review (1948) collected the history of first ten years of this annual and the club. An extensive history of the movement, The Jindyworobaks (ed. Brian Elliot) was published in 1979.