Dalaipi

Dalaipi or Dalaipie (c. 1795 – c. 1863) was an Aboriginal Australian elder, a headman, guide, songman, mediator and philosopher in the Pine Rivers area north of Brisbane, Queensland.^[1] He was also known as Deliapee, Deliape, Dolaibi, Daleipy, Delaibi, and Dailpie.^[1]Dalaipi was a distinguished elder of the North Pine clan of the Turrbal people.^[2]

Dalaipi interacted with Andrew Petrie, one of Brisbane’s early settlers and helped to care for his son, Thomas.^[1][3][4] Details of his life and traditions were preserved in Thomas Petrie's Reminiscences of Early Queensland (1904).^[5][6] According to Petrie, Dalaipi was the head man of the North Pine tribe,^[7] located north of Brisbane.^[8][9][10] His mother tongue was probably Turrbal, Yugara, or Nalbo.^[1]

Between the 1850s and 1890s Christian missionaries in the region challenged Aboriginal spirituality.^[11][12]  Dalaipi was one of the authors, together with Dalinkua, of a series of statements that appeared in the local newspapers contrasting the settlers and missionaries religious teachings with their treatment of the local Aboriginal communities.^{[13][14][15][16][17]}