Skin name: Ngalwangardi
Clan: Karturra

Ngalwangardi grew up in a multilingual community in which her father's language, Iwaidja, was dominant. Although Iwaidja became Ngalwangardi's first language, throughout her childhood and youth her mother consistently spoke to her in Marrku and she maintained a good passive knowledge of that language. In addition, Ngalwangardi had a high level of competency in Mawng, Kunwinjku and English.

Ngalwangardi was born in 1946 at Jamarldinki (Cape Don) on the Cobourg Peninsula. She spent the early years of her life there before moving to Minjilang with her mother, Hazel Mamiyarr, in the mid 1950s. In 1969 she began working at the school at Minjilang, became qualified as an assistant teacher, and continued to work there until her retirement in 2007. In the mid 1970s Ngalwangardi acted as an Iwaidja language consultant with linguists Noreen Pym and Bonnie Larrimore of the Summer Institute of Linguistics and she produced textbooks in Iwaidja for the school. From 2003-2011, she worked as a language consultant for the Iwaidja Domentation Project (DoBes/VW foundation).

Ngalwangardi was a founding member of Iwaidja Inyman and one of the project’s key language and culture consultants until her death in 2012. She provided her outstation at Adjamarduku on Croker Island as a living and working base for the project and it was her wish that the outstation continue to be used for work on local Indigenous language and culture into the future.