Murri

See also: murri

English

Etymology

From Gamilaraay mari (“Aboriginal man”).

Pronunciation

(General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈmɐriː/

Noun

Murri (plural Murris or Murries)

(Australian Aboriginal, Queensland, New South Wales) An indigenous Australian, especially one from Queensland or northern New South Wales.
Synonym: Koori (Victoria, New South Wales)
- 1979, Thea Astley, Hunting the Wild Pineapple, Nelson, page 24:
  [O]n the veranda a fight started round the dart-board and two of the Murris threw punches until the barman thumped them apart.
- 1992, Bill Dodd, Broken Dreams, University of Queensland Press, unnumbered page:
  The local council wanted the Murries to live in town. (The council didn't care too much what the Murries themselves thought of this idea.)
- 1998, Margaret Henderson, Subdivisions of Suburbia, Andrew McCann (editor), Writing the Everyday, Australian Literary Studies, Volume 18, No. 4, University of Queensland Press, page 78,
  She can confidently walk through the mall, and make the politico-spatial connections between what she sees (Murries sitting and begging, crowds of Chinese-Australians, police lurking), what she has experienced in Eagleby (dispossessed whites, Murries unaware of their heritage), and what she has learnt from Roger, Kerry, and the 'Anyday Story'.
- 2002, Alex Miller, Journey to the Stone Country, Allen & Unwin, published 2003, page 15:
  ‘The Murris don't work to whitefeller schedules. That's not the way it is.’
- 2006, Martin Cohen, No Holiday: 80 Places You Don't Want to Visit, The Disinformation Company Ltd., unnumbered page:
  The immediate background to the event was several massacres, the killings of Murries at Teewah beach, and the "clearing" of the Dawson Valley where other Murries had been fighting a sort of guerilla war against the white invasion of the grasslands.

Usage notes

Preferred by (some of) the people themselves over the terms aborigine and aboriginal, which are considered to be culturally loaded. Other terms are used in other regions.