This painting was created during a workshop on the 18th June with Newman Futures in collaboration with Martumili Artists. The workshop was a way of generating ideas in regards to improving the spaces in and around East Newman from and for Martu.
Charlene painted new houses, a bbq area, benches, footpaths, streetlights and a garden with lots of greenery.
This painting was created during a workshop on the 18th June with Newman Futures in collaboration with Martumili Artists. The workshop was a way of generating ideas in regards to improving the spaces in and around East Newman from and for Martu.
Marianne painted East Newman with a focus around a large oval for recreation and lots of greenery.
This painting was created during a workshop on the 18th June with Newman Futures in collaboration with Martumili Artists. The workshop was a way of generating ideas in regards to improving the spaces in and around East Newman from and for Martu.
Tracey painted a boy and girl hostel for Martu youth that travel into Newman temporarily and also live here on a more permanent basis but don’t have access to safe housing. Within the hostels there are showers and bedrooms for the kids in high school and younger.
She also painted an oval for softball, a disco and games room, for kids and changing rooms to use while people play sports.
This painting was created during a workshop on the 18th June with Newman Futures in collaboration with Martumili Artists. The workshop was a way of generating ideas in regards to improving the spaces in and around East Newman from and for Martu.
Judith painted an oval, drinking water stations, shade shelter, table, benches, streetlights and lots of green trees and grass.
This painting was created during a workshop on the 18th June with Newman Futures in collaboration with Martumili Artists. The workshop was a way of generating ideas in regards to improving the spaces in and around East Newman.
Beverly painted her home country of Punmu, a place she directly relates and connects to while she stays in Newman.
Jila-jila is one of several soaks located close to Punmu Aboriginal Community, and on the eastern edge of Kumpupirntily (Kumpupintily, Lake Disappointment). Extensive permanent tali (sandhills) surround this soak. Jila-jila is also a popular area for collecting minyarra (bush onion). Minyarra (bush onion) are a favoured bush tucker amongst the Martu, popular for their sweet, nutty taste and for the relative ease with which they are foraged. Typically, minyarra is collected in large quantities close to springs, and then shared and eaten over the following days. The minyarra plant is small and grass like, with edible tubers at the root. They can be eaten raw or cooked, and are harvested by first loosening the soil at their base with a pounding stone, and then pulling out the plant.
During the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) period, Martu would traverse very large distances annually in small family groups, moving seasonally from water source to water source, and hunting and gathering bush tucker as they went. Whilst desert life has moved away from mobile hunter-gatherer subsistence throughout the course of the twentieth century, bush tucker continues to be a significant component of the modern Martu diet. Hunting and gathering bush tucker remains equally valuable as an important cultural practice that is passed on intergenerationally.
“When Martu paint, it’s like a map. Martu draw story on the ground and on the canvas, and all the circle and line there are the hunting areas and different waters and tracks where people used to walk, and [some you] can’t cross, like boundaries. So nowadays you see a colourful painting and wonder what it is, but that’s how Martu tell story long ago. It’s not just a lovely painting, it’s a story and a songline and a history and everything that goes with it.”
– Ngalangka Nola Taylor and Joshua Booth
This work portrays an area of Country that can be interpreted in multiple ways. Firstly, the image may be read as an aerial representation of a particular location known to the artist- either land that they or their family travelled, from the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) era to now. During the pujiman period, Martu would traverse very large distances annually in small family groups, moving seasonally from water source to water source, and hunting and gathering bush tucker as they went. At this time, one’s survival depended on their intimate knowledge of the location of resources; thus physical elements of Country, such as sources of kapi (water), tali (sandhills), different varieties of warta (trees, vegetation), ngarrini (camps), and jina (tracks) are typically recorded with the use of a use of a system of iconographic forms universally shared across the desert.
An additional layer of meaning in the work relates to more intangible concepts; life cycles based around kalyu (rain, water) and waru (fire) are also often evident. A thousands of year old practice, fire burning continues to be carried out as both an aid for hunting and a means of land management today. As the Martu travelled and hunted they would burn tracts of land, ensuring plant and animal biodiversity and reducing the risk of unmanageable, spontaneous bush fires. The patchwork nature of regrowth is evident in many landscape works, with each of the five distinctive phases of fire burning visually described with respect to the cycle of burning and regrowth.
Finally, metaphysical information relating to a location may also be recorded; Jukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives chronicle the creation of physical landmarks, and can be referenced through depictions of ceremonial sites, songlines, and markers left in the land. Very often, however, information relating to Jukurrpa is censored by omission, or alternatively painted over with dotted patterns.
“When Martu paint, it’s like a map. Martu draw story on the ground and on the canvas, and all the circle and line there are the hunting areas and different waters and tracks where people used to walk, and [some you] can’t cross, like boundaries. So nowadays you see a colourful painting and wonder what it is, but that’s how Martu tell story long ago. It’s not just a lovely painting, it’s a story and a songline and a history and everything that goes with it.”
– Ngalangka Nola Taylor and Joshua Booth
This work portrays an area of Country that can be interpreted in multiple ways. Firstly, the image may be read as an aerial representation of a particular location known to the artist- either land that they or their family travelled, from the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) era to now. During the pujiman period, Martu would traverse very large distances annually in small family groups, moving seasonally from water source to water source, and hunting and gathering bush tucker as they went. At this time, one’s survival depended on their intimate knowledge of the location of resources; thus physical elements of Country, such as sources of kapi (water), tali (sandhills), different varieties of warta (trees, vegetation), ngarrini (camps), and jina (tracks) are typically recorded with the use of a use of a system of iconographic forms universally shared across the desert.
An additional layer of meaning in the work relates to more intangible concepts; life cycles based around kalyu (rain, water) and waru (fire) are also often evident. A thousands of year old practice, fire burning continues to be carried out as both an aid for hunting and a means of land management today. As the Martu travelled and hunted they would burn tracts of land, ensuring plant and animal biodiversity and reducing the risk of unmanageable, spontaneous bush fires. The patchwork nature of regrowth is evident in many landscape works, with each of the five distinctive phases of fire burning visually described with respect to the cycle of burning and regrowth.
Finally, metaphysical information relating to a location may also be recorded; Jukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives chronicle the creation of physical landmarks, and can be referenced through depictions of ceremonial sites, songlines, and markers left in the land. Very often, however, information relating to Jukurrpa is censored by omission, or alternatively painted over with dotted patterns.
“This Karlamilyi area, big land. That’s a ngurra (home Country, camp) belonging to our old people, Warnman people. We talk for our land, our jila (snake). I grew up in this Country, my Country. This land belongs to our father. In pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) days I walked around here, used to walk up and down tuwa (sandhill) and back to the main camp belonging to Martu.
That river running through, he called Pirnpi. Whitefella way is Rudall River. There’s a bird, karuwarlkun (magpie), flying and singing everywhere in the Rudall River there. The river is flowing to Lake Dora, it has five waterholes in the river system. Outside of the river are creeks and gullies, the salt lake, Lake Dora, and the sand dunes.
There’s a claypan there too, big claypan, close to Walirrlirri. Pangkartal we call him. There’s a big rain there, rain time. Fill him up water when the rain time comes. Snake living there in Pangkartal, big one. He [the snake] going to listen to the owner of the land. When we sing out to him in a Warnman way, we tell him “Stop, don’t get cheeky. We coming in [to the land].” He not cheeky, he a good one. Quiet snake.
At Nyayartakujarra (Lake Dora), [in the north east of the region,] two snakes been killed. Right here they got crook in the Dreamtime. All the men, Ngaanyatjarra and Warnman, they were singing. One young fella, he threw a spear into the snake. That snake felt something there, got killed and burned.
[West of Nyayartakujarra is] Yanytikuji, red hill over there. They working, doing the mining there now [at Yandicoogina Mine]. Next to Yanytikuji is a big claypan, Yalpalpa, main camp and a water. That’s a hunting place. Plenty of bush tucker round there; kanyjamarra (yam, bush carrot), like a carrot growing in the ground in the river bed there. You pull it out, just like a carrot! Lunki (witchetty grub), and jatarrpa, that’s like a seed, you gotta clean him up and grind it to make a flour wheat, make a damper in the waru (fire). We gonna get that seed and show you fellas. Minyarra (bush onion) there, and ngaputa (sweet, patterned green melon), they all grow in the river banks.
In the middle is Putarrluu, a yinta (permanent spring) where there are two snakes, a man and a woman snake. They are nyupa (partners), they stop here, it is their yinta. You can’t camp right at the big yinta because of the snakes. You have to get your water from the little soak. When we want to get water we talk to the snakes in Warnman, their language, and the snakes send the water to them.
This one Wartararra area, [south of Yanytikuji,] but you can’t go through there. This one Pulikati [Hill] area, we used to go through a gap here. There is quicksand here. People don’t go there. We used to sing out for this water, from this side. The old people used to sing out to “Come on, send the water for me.” You can’t go through there, quicksand, not allowed.
Tintinmarran, bottom end of Rudall River [and southeast of Pulikati. There is a januku (waterfall) there, a big yapu (hill), two tuwa (sandhills), and jawirli (quondong) trees. All of the rivers run down through Tintinmarran before joining Rudall River. After all the kapi (water) joins the Rudall River it runs to Warnanjarra where it disappears underground and goes all the way up north to Derby.
I [Jatarr Lily Long] was born there in Karlamilyi River, that’s my Country. [I was born in] Jatarrngara, that’s the name for the place and that’s my name. That’s the living water place.
We are Warnman ladies, painting Kintyre and Karlamilyi. We can share this Country.”
–Sisters Wurta Amy French and Jatarr Lily Long
Karlamilyi (Rudall River) is Warnman Country, located in the very heart of the Martu homelands. The Karlamilyi region is ngurra for sisters Wurta Amy French and Jatarr Lily Long. They travelled and camped extensively around this area with their family in their youth, and possess a great deal of knowledge of the region’s physical elements, resource distribution, and Jukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives.
The region is situated southwest of the Great Sandy Desert and northeast of the Little Sandy Desert. Spanning through the region is the epic Karlamilyi River, which runs north into Nyayartakujarra (Lake Dora), a large salt lake. The Broadhurst and Fingoon Ranges extend diagonally across the river’s path. The landscape is striking for its abundance of gorges and valleys carved by ice age glaciers, rugged cliffs, red tali (sand dunes), grasslands, sandstone and quartz rocky outcrops, and salt lakes.
Across the whole region are hundreds of water sources; including waterholes, creeks, soaks, lakes, pools and rockholes. Lining the rivers are coolabah, walyji (river gum), yulbah (bats wing coral tree), and several species of acacia and hakea. Jalkuran (paperbark), kurrulyu/ mijarrpa (bloodwood) and jawirli (quandong) are found in the region’s valleys, and wikirrpa (desert oaks) and grasses in the sandplains. The area is abundant with bird species, jila, maruntu (goannas), red kangaroos and warlpaju (rock wallabies). The region is also home to remote aboriginal communities Punmu and Parnngurr.
According to two of the central Martu Jukurrpa narratives, the Karlamilyi River and its surrounds were created by the ancestral beings Jila Kujarra (Two Snakes) and the Wati Kujarra (Two Goanna Men) as they travelled across the lands.
“Good spring, lots of fish and rockholes too, and a big jila (snake). There are three rivers all around Nullagine, all join the Nullagine river. You can swim here, there’s lots of hunting. We go camp in the river, lovely river. Take the kids for holiday, play around, climb in the trees.
Near Nullagine one man always chasing the Seven Sisters. In our Country, old man is standing in the rock. The other side is trees- the ladies. That man he still standing there, hanging on. He went from Nullagine to Parnngurr, he met them there and kept going to the central desert, chasing the sisters.”
– Jatarr Lily Long
Nullagine, an old goldrush town, and the adjacent Irrungadji (Yirrangadji) Aboriginal community are located at the heart of Western Australia’s Pilbara region. Both the town and Community lie along the Nullagine River, the site of many Jukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives including that of the Minyipuru (Jakulyukulyu, Seven Sisters). As described by Jatarr, the Minyipuru passed through this area, and carved on a rock just outside of Nullagine is Yurla, the relentless pursuer of the Minyipuru, eternally watching the women.
Minyipuru is a key creation narrative for Martu, Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people that is associated with the seasonal Pleiades star constellation. Beginning in Roebourne on the west coast of Western Australia, the story morphs in its movement eastward across the land, following a group of women as they walk, dance, and even fly from waterhole to waterhole. As they travel the women camp, sing, wash, dance and gather food, leaving markers in the landscape and creating landforms that remain to this day, such as groupings of rocks and trees, grinding stones and seeds. During the entirety of their journey the women are pursued by the lustful old man, Yurla, although interactions with other animals, groups of men, and spirit beings are also chronicled in the narrative.