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Ngami – Roma Gibson

“Ngami got no lake, only got a stone. That’s the ladies, the Seven Sisters sitting down. That’s a Jukurrpa (Dreaming) story from the old people. Man chasing all the ladies, Seven Sisters. That’s my grandmother’s story, that’s her place. She told me that story when I was a big lady.”

 – Roma Gibson

 

Ngami is the birthplace for Roma’s grandmother, and as such forms a crucial part of her ngurra (home Country, camp).

Ngami also features as a site in the Minyipuru (Jakulyukulyu, Seven Sisters) Jukurrpa (Dreaming). The term Jukurrpa is often translated in English as the ‘dreaming’, or ‘dreamtime’, and refers generally to the period in which the world was created by ancestral beings in 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. As Roma describes, the Seven Sisters can still be seen at Ngami today as a striking group of rocks. 

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 the grouping of rocks described here by Linda. During the entirety of their journey the women are pursued by a lustful old man, Yurla, although interactions with other animals, groups of men, and spirit beings are also chronicled in the narrative.

Name: Roma Gibson


Language: Pintubi


Community: Kunawarritji


Biography:

"I was born in Papunya, Northern Territory, old clinic hospital in 1975. I grew up in Tjukurla, Kintore and Kiwirrkurra communities. I got a family all there. I moved over to Kunawarritji in 1986 to get married to my husband. We lived Kunawarritji for a long time, I still live there. 

I started painting with my grandmother, Ningurra Nyapurrula Gibson. I was helping my grandmother doing her own one. She was a painter in Alice springs. I paint her story now.

My mother, Mary Gibson, and brother, Bob Gibson, are also painters. They paint with Kaltukujarra art centre in Docker River, NT."

 - Roma Gibbs

 

Roma is a Pintupi woman. Her family, along with many others, were forcibly removed from their country due to weapons testing from Woomera in South Australia, and relocated to Papunya. In 1981 Kintore community, 530km west of  Alice Springs, was founded with the Return to Country movement. It was in this community and it's surrounds that Roma spent most of her childhood years, before moving to Kunawarritji as a young woman. Here she married her husband, and continues to live to present day.


© the artist / art centre