This design shows how the bottom part of a black palm basket is woven. My grandmothers and aunties used to make them. They cut off the young palm leaves in the centre, stripped and scrapped them. Then they would put the strips in freshwater to make them soft and keep them straight for weaving.
This design shows how the bottom part of a black palm basket is woven. My grandmothers and aunties used to make them. They cut off the young palm leaves in the centre, stripped and scrapped them. Then they would put the strips in freshwater to make them soft and keep them straight for weaving.
This design shows how the bottom part of a black palm basket is woven. My grandmothers and aunties used to make them. They cut off the young palm leaves in the centre, stripped and scrapped them. Then they would put the strips in freshwater to make them soft and keep them straight for weaving.
This design shows how the bottom part of a black palm basket is woven. My grandmothers and aunties used to make them. They cut off the young palm leaves in the centre, stripped and scrapped them. Then they would put the strips in freshwater to make them soft and keep them straight for weaving.
The Mossman River is very important to me and my family. Laurence, my partner and the father of our 5 children, is one of the Traditional Owners of this area. We both grew up along the river and Laurence’s grandparents used to live in a hut next to the river. In the hot season, we used to camp there with our families. Laurence would teach me and later our children how to dive for turtle and fish. We would cross the river to hunt and collect bush food. Back at the camp, we would make fire, cook our damper and fish in an earth oven and share with our families.
The Mossman River is very important to me and my family. Laurence, my partner and the father of our 5 children, is one of the Traditional Owners of this area. We both grew up along the river and Laurence’s grandparents used to live in a hut next to the river. In the hot season, we used to camp there with our families. Laurence would teach me and later our children how to dive for turtle and fish. We would cross the river to hunt and collect bush food. Back at the camp, we would make fire, cook our damper and fish in an earth oven and share with our families.
28,000 years ago, the Cadell Fault happened, a major earthquake on Yorta Yorta country. The Earth rose 200ft high, pushing all the water out of the rivers and flooding the country. The old people needed to move the water, so they got their digging sticks and dug out a section of the sandy banks to let the water flow through. This changed the course of the river. Originally, the river ran through the Ochre Mines. When it rains the ochre mixes together, creating the colours of the Rainbow Serpent. This painting shows the traditional pattern of the river, the zigzag lined design, and the colourful ochre mixing together in the background. This is the old river.
This artwork tells a story of keeping the fire burning. It displays fire sticks Xanthorrhea tree, in Yorta Yorta we call him Bitdja tree, bitdja means fire in Yorta Yorta language. The stalk of the Bitdja tree is a softwood. The old people would go and collect the stork when it was very thick. They would cut the stalk of the tree and split it down the centre and that was used for the creation of fire by rubbing a hard wood into the soft wood to create embers. You would then pick up grass, rub it into a ball, place the hot embers into the centre of the grass, then blow onto it which creates a fire. This year’s theme for NAIDOC is Keep the Fire Burning, to do that we must go back in order to go forward. The traditional way of life is the way we carry on the fire. For our spirit, for our country, it’s the old ways or no ways.
That kundalk (sedge/grass) it grows in the water in that black mud, it holds fast to that mud. Wet season time, that kunwarrde (stone country) covered by leaves and grass and mud. When it rains the fish come through. You can see that grass, under the river, in that black mud. When that water is flowing fast the fish can jump to other river. When it dries up, no fish, only sand and little bit of water. This area is from Mankorlord, that’s kunwarrde. (Janet Marawarr 2024)
“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.