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Nancy Pitjara Frank – Inteng Inteng

Inteng inteng is bush medicine, it has a pretty purple flower, and sometimes white flowers – it changes colours. It is very smelly and you can smell it from a distance. We use it for bush medicine, we boil it up in water and sometimes in oil, to put on our skin to fix sores, and aches or to wash our bodies. My mother taught me and my sister Rita to make it. Her mother, my grandmother taught her how to make it. We made this medicine from a long time ago when we were little girls and we had no other medicine.

Categories: Artists of Ampilatwatja

Name: Nancy Pitjara Frank

Language: Alyawarre

Community: Ampilatwatja

Biography:

 

I was born in the bush at Ammaroo Station, along the Sandover.  I have never seen the ocean or a big city. My mother and father were strong healthy people who taught me and my younger sister Rita the traditional way to hunt for Kangaroo, Goanna and Porcupine.

We know how to gather bush tucker (secrets of the earth) and bush medicine plants.  My mother used grinding stones to make seed damper.

When I paint I think about good memories, being a young girl and walking through the land.  My mother made paint from two stones and showed us ceremony painting and how to sing and dance for ceremonies.  I still sing and dance and collect the bush medicines, I like to make tea from the small purple flowers of Arreth (hill fuchsia).

Painting bush medicine stories is important because it helps to maintain a strong knowledge and culture for the community.

Nancy was born in the bush on Ammaroo Station and is Artist Rita Beasley's older sister.

Previously living in Irrultja, not far from Ampilatwatja. Nancy has come back to Ampilawatja to be with her sister. 

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