This paper is based on research supported by the Australian Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, the Emslie Hornimann Fund and the University of London. I am grateful to Kaanju people from the Wenlock and Pascoe rivers, and to the other families of central Cape York Peninsula, for their ongoing support of my research. I owe a particular debt to members of the Moreton/Nelson family, without whose ongoing support this paper could not have been written. I am also grateful to the two anonymous referees for their useful comments. Any errors of fact and analysis that remain are mine.