Munangabum was an influential clan head of the Liarga balug and Spiritual Leader or neyerneyemeet of the Dja Dja Wurrung

Dja Dja Wurrung

Dja Dja Wurrung, also known as the Jaara people and Loddon River tribe, is a native Aboriginal tribe which occupied the watersheds of the Loddon and Avoca Rivers in the Bendigo region of central Victoria, Australia. They were part of the Kulin alliance of tribes. There were 16 clans, which adhered...

 people in central Victoria, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

.

He was influential in shaping his peoples response to invasion and European settlement in the 1830s and 1840s. He was gaoled in 1840 for sheep-stealing which resulted in Dja Dja Wurrung people traveling to Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

 to plead for his release. Woiwurrung

Woiwurrung

Woiwurrung is an Indigenous Australian language spoken by some of the Kulin Nation clans, the Wurundjeri people, of Central Victoria, from Mount Baw Baw in the east to Mount Macedon, Sunbury and Gisborne in the west.The Woiwurrung clans inhabited the Yarra River, called Birrarung in Woiwurrung,...

 and Djadja wurrung people feared that unless Munangabum was released, he would move Bunjil

Bunjil

In Australian Aboriginal mythology, Bunjil the eagle is a creator deity, culture hero and ancestral being. In the Kulin nation in central Victoria he was regarded as one of two moiety ancestors, the other being the trickster Crow. Bunjil has two wives and a son, Binbeal the rainbow. His brother...

 to release the Mindye causing a plague to black and white.

Munangabum was released from Gaol in August 1840. On 7 February 1841 Munangabum was shot and wounded in the shoulder by settlers while his companion Gondiurmin died at Far Creek Station, west of Maryborough. Three settlers were later apprehended and tried on 18 May 1841 for the murder of Gondiurmin but were acquitted for want of evidence, as aborigines could not give evidence in courts of law.

In 1841 he acted as an envoy for Assistant Protector of Aborigines

Protector of Aborigines

The role of Protectors of Aborigines resulted from a recommendation of the report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Aborigines . On 31 January 1838, Lord Glenelg, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies sent Governor Gipps the report.The report recommended that Protectors of...

 Edward Stone Parker

Edward Stone Parker

Edward Stone Parker was a Methodist preacher and assistant Protector of Aborigines in the Aboriginal Protectorate established in the Port Philip District of colonial New South Wales under George Augustus Robinson in 1838...

, and almost died from lack of water for three days on an expedition to the Mallee.

Munangabum was murdered in 1846 by a rival clan-head from the south.