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Parnpajinya

“We used to camp here before, in Parnpajinya. See these brown hills? This is where I been camping right there with no house, nothing. These two hills are Mount Whaleback. See the two orange ovals? That’s where the Dreamtime death adders used to sleep. There was a man snake and a woman snake. Where the man snake slept is now Boomerang Oval, and the woman’s side is now the hospital and the clinic. Yuwayi (yes).”

 – Mantyil May Brooks

Parnpajinya is a small Aboriginal community adjacent to the town of Newman. This site lies within May’s ngurra (home Country, camp), the area which she knew intimately and travelled extensively with her family in her youth. 

In her account of the area, May describes the Jukurrpa (Dreaming) snakes that lived in this area. The term Jukurrpa is often translated in English as the ‘Dreaming’, or ‘Dreamtime’. It refers generally to the period in which the world was created by ancestral beings, who assumed both human and nonhuman forms. These beings shaped what had been a formless landscape; creating waters, plants, animals, and people. At the same time they provided cultural protocols for the people they created, as well as rules for interacting with the natural environment. At their journey’s end, the ancestral beings transformed themselves into important waters, hills, rocks, and even constellations.

Categories: Shire of East Pilbara (Martumili Artists)

Name: May Manyjirr Brooks

Language: Kartujarra

Biography:

Manyjirr is a Manyjilyjarra woman, born at Jigalong Mission in 1952 and primarily raised by the missionaries there. She is the sister of Sarah Brooks (dec.) and fellow Martumili Artist Clifford Brooks. Her father’s brother was the critically acclaimed artist, Rover Thomas. 

Manyjirr schooled at the mission from between the ages of six and sixteen, until she was given away in a traditional manner to her then husband, with whom she was married for many years. Together they had three children. From Jigalong, Manyjirr went to work at Mundawindi (Muntawinti) cattle station and then Ethel Creek Station before moving to Fortescue River, at the outskirts of Newman town. When Manyjirr and her husband later returned to Jigalong he became the community’s chairman for a time. Today she lives with her family between Newman and Punmu Aboriginal community. 

Manyjirr was one of Martumili’s pioneering artists. She paints her parents’ and her own ngurra (home Country, camp); the Country surrounding Raarki (Canning Stock Route Well 27), Kunawarritji (Canning Stock Route Well 33), Punmu and Parnpajinya. 

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