The Ngarrindjeri people are the traditional Aboriginal Australian people of the lower Murray River, eastern Fleurieu Peninsula, and the Coorong of the southern-central area of the state of South Australia. The term Ngarrindjeri means "belonging to men", and refers to a "tribal constellation". The Ngarrindjeri actually comprised several distinct if closely related tribal groups, including the Jarildekald, Tanganekald, Meintangk and Ramindjeri, who began to form a unified cultural bloc after remnants of each separate community congregated at Raukkan, South Australia (formerly Point McLeay Mission). A descendant of these peoples, Irene Watson, has argued that the notion of Ngarrindjeri identity is a cultural construct imposed by settler colonialists, who bundled together and conflated a variety of distinct Aboriginal cultural and kinship groups into one homogenised pattern is now known as Ngarrindjeri. Historical designation and usage Sources disagree as to who the Ngarrindjeri were. The missionary George Taplin chose it, spelling the term as Narrinyeri, as a generic ethnonym to designate a unified constellation several distinct tribes, and bearing the meaning of "belonging to people", as opposed to kringgari (whites). Etymologically, it is thought to be an abbreviation of kornarinyeri ("belonging to men/human beings", formed narr (linguistically plain or intelligible) and inyeri, a suffix indicating belongingness. It implied that those outside the group were not quite human. Other terms were available, for example, Kukabrak, but Taplin's authority popularised the other term. Later ethnographers and anthropologists have disagreed with Taplin's construction of the tribal federation of 18 lakinyeri (clans). Ian D. Clark has called it a "reinvention of tradition". Norman Tindale and Ronald Murray Berndt in particular were critical both of Taplin and of each other's reevaluation of the evidence. According to Tindale, a close evaluation of his material suggests that his data pertains basically to the Jarildekald/Yaralde culture, and he limited their borders to Cape Jervis, whereas Berndt and his wife Catherine Berndt argued that the Ramindjeri component lived in proximity to Adelaide. The Berndts argued that, despite cultural links, there was no political unity to warrant the "nation" or "confederacy". Country According to David Horton's map "Aboriginal Australia", the Ngarrindjeri lands lie along the Coorong coastline, from Victor Harbor on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in the north, to Cape Jaffa in the south. According to the map, the lands extend inland just north of Murray Bridge, receding to a wide coastal strip west of the Murray River lower lakes, but extending