---

---

Nyayartakujarra

 “Just like your on a plane looking down. This one here lake Nyayartakujarra connecting with this one here.

Water comes from Karlamilyi. Water flows to the lake and Jamparri, Jintirripalangu and Pinangu claypan. This one here Tarl, Wawul water next to lake. Blue dots water Rawa next to Punmu and this one Jilla Jilla This is Rudal River. Wilurr is the water there its a soak there. Green over here grasses and Spinifex. Orange one Parna (ground). All the purple ones Kalaru (bush damper seed). 

If you go on the plane to Newman you see this one here, its a creek. You can see from the air water flowing from creek to claypans. This all area my family being walking here. Warnman country my father country and grandmother and grandfather”. 

– Damien Miller 

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.