Shire of East Pilbara (Martumili Artists)

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Niminjarra (nyurnma)

“Niminjarra is the two brothers transforming into a snake so they can go back home to Ngayartakujarra (Lake Dora). They were in training for ceremony, those two brothers, but they were kept too long and nobody was there to release them. They waited then they decided to transform into snakes to travel back to where they came from, because their mother was waiting for them. This is Jukurrpa (Dreaming story)

Here the Jila Kujarra are travelling West through the nyurnma (burnt Country) coming from the East, from Karilywara, trying to get closer to the lake.”

– Desmond Taylor

The term jukurrpa is often translated in English as the ‘dreaming’, or ‘dreamtime’. It refers generally to the period in which the world was created by ancestral beings, who assumed 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. 

Jila Kujarra (Two Snakes) is one of the key jukurrpa narratives for the Martu. Though the story belongs to Warnman people, it is shared across the Western Desert with several other language groups. The narrative centres on the travels of two snakes as they are pursued by the Niminjarra, spiritual ancestors of the Warnman people. Before transforming themselves into snakes, the Jila Kujarra were young brothers waiting to be released from ceremony at the boundary of Mukurtu, west of Mamunara (Canning Stock Route Well 28). They began travelling home to their mother in the west, but were intercepted by the Niminjarra as they hunted and hurled their spears in front of them. Suddenly the spears of the Niminjarra stuck in the ground and swayed in the air, alerting the Niminjarra to the tracks of the Jila Kujarra.

The Niminjarra started to track the Jila Kujarra, but stopped with their many weapons at Jantuwurujul (or Janturuly) to hunt for wild game. The Jila Kujarra continued to flee, reaching Paji, east of Nyayartakujarra (Lake Dora) before they were again intercepted by the Niminjarra. The Niminjarra believed the snakes had hidden in a cave north of Paji, and tried to smoke them out. Again, the Jila Kujarra eluded their pursuers, this time escaping under the lake at Paji and at the same time creating many small decoy snakes to lead the Niminjarra astray. 

Meanwhile, from a nearby hill, two Pukurti (initiates with bundled hair) prophesied that the Niminjarra would kill the Jila Kujarra. The Pukurti tracked the Jila Kujarra through to Nyayartakujarra, where they speared the snakes in the head to hold them down while they returned to Paji to summon the Niminjarra. The Niminjarra made a fire and cooked the snakes at Ngayartakujarra (Lake Dora). The snakes were too long to lay down on leafy branches to be cut up, so the Niminjarra lay down to make a human table. When the Niminjarra cut down the length of the Jila Kujarra, the snake’s bladders were pierced, causing an explosion of scalding hot urine in which the Niminjarra all perished and became black rocks at the site. At the same time, the urine of the Jila Kujarra formed the vast salt lake, Kumpupirntily, which translates to ‘bladder burst’.  

The spirits of the Jila Kujarra rose and continued to travel to their mother at Nyayartakujarra. She saw them coming towards her as flaming figures, and called out to them, piercing the surface of the salt lake with her digging stick. There, the mother and her sons entered the ground below Nyayartakujarra, where they remain to this day.

 

 

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Kulyakartu

“My Country, Kulyakartu. I grew up there, from little boy to big boy grew up there.”

– Muuki Taylor

This painting depicts Muuki’s Country, Kulyakartu; an area in the far north of the Martu homelands, near the Percival Lakes in the northern Great Sandy Desert. The artist has extensive knowledge of the Country in this region, where he grew up living traditionally during the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) days with his family. Kulyakartu is mostly grass Country where there is very good hunting. There is no permanent water source in Kulyakartu, so his family would walk here annually following the wet season.

Muuki paints his Country in all its different seasonal stages. Often visible in his work is the patchwork of nyurnma (burnt ground) depicting the regrowth subsequent to the practice of waru (fire) burning that assists with hunting, regenerates growth, and encourages greater diversity in plant and animal life.

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Kulyakartu

“My Country, Kulyakartu. I grew up there, from little boy to big boy grew up there.”

– Muuki Taylor

This painting depicts Muuki’s Country, Kulyakartu; an area in the far north of the Martu homelands, near the Percival Lakes in the northern Great Sandy Desert. The artist has extensive knowledge of the Country in this region, where he grew up living traditionally during the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) days with his family. Kulyakartu is mostly grass Country where there is very good hunting. There is no permanent water source in Kulyakartu, so his family would walk here annually following the wet season.

Muuki paints his Country in all its different seasonal stages. Often visible in his work is the patchwork of nyurnma (burnt ground) depicting the regrowth subsequent to the practice of waru (fire) burning that assists with hunting, regenerates growth, and encourages greater diversity in plant and animal life.

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Kulyakartu

“My Country, Kulyakartu. I grew up there, from little boy to big boy grew up there.”

– Muuki Taylor

This painting depicts Muuki’s Country, Kulyakartu; an area in the far north of the Martu homelands, near the Percival Lakes in the northern Great Sandy Desert. The artist has extensive knowledge of the Country in this region, where he grew up living traditionally during the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) days with his family. Kulyakartu is mostly grass Country where there is very good hunting. There is no permanent water source in Kulyakartu, so his family would walk here annually following the wet season.

Muuki paints his Country in all its different seasonal stages. Often visible in his work is the patchwork of nyurnma (burnt ground) depicting the regrowth subsequent to the practice of waru (fire) burning that assists with hunting, regenerates growth, and encourages greater diversity in plant and animal life.

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Minyipuru (Jakulyukulyu, Seven Sisters)

The term Jukurrpa is often translated in English as the ‘dreaming’, or ‘dreamtime’. It refers generally to the period in which the world was created by ancestral beings, who assumed 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. 

Minyipuru, or Jakulyukulyu (Seven Sisters) is a central Jukurrpa narrative for Martu, Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people that is associated with the seasonal Pleiades star constellation. Relayed in song, dance, stories and paintings, Minyipuru serves as a creation narrative, a source of information relating to the physical properties of the land, and an embodiment of Aboriginal cultural laws. When Martumili Artists was established in 2005, this was the first Jukurrpa story the artists agreed to paint for a broader public. 

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 a lustful old man, Yurla, although interactions with other animals, groups of men, and spirit beings are also chronicled.

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Untitled

This work portrays an area known intimately to the artist, painted here in exquisite detail from memory. During the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) era 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), and different varieties of warta (trees, vegetation) were carefully observed and remembered. Today, this relationship with Country remains equally strong, despite the movement of Martu out of the desert and into remote Aboriginal Communities, towns and cities.

Also visible may be traces of life cycles based around kalyu (rain, water) and waru (fire). 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 visible 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. 

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Untitled

“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.

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Untitled

This work portrays an area known intimately to the artist, painted here in exquisite detail from memory. During the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) era 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), and different varieties of warta (trees, vegetation) were carefully observed and remembered. Today, this relationship with Country remains equally strong, despite the movement of Martu out of the desert and into remote Aboriginal Communities, towns and cities.

Also visible may be traces of life cycles based around kalyu (rain, water) and waru (fire). 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 visible 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. 

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Blue Hills

This painting depicts Blue Hills, which is Miriam’s father’s ancestral country. Kajarra (Kadjara) is the Martu name for the Carnarvon Ranges, which are situated in the Little Sandy Desert around 50 kilometres west of Well 5 on the Canning Stock Route. The red granite battlements of Kadjara rise up from spinifex plains and have many permanent waters. Kadjara was an important camping place for Martu walking between Jigalong and Wiluna for Law business up until the late 1960s, as well as Martu who walked the Canning Stock Route into Wiluna. Kadjara can be seen from Blue Hills. Blue Hills, now abandoned, was a small Martu outstation running cattle established after World War II and famously run by Tommy Ingebong, a Putijarra Martu from Wiluna. Many Martu people know of Blue Hills because of its was one of the first land grants to Martu, and because of its stunning views north-west across to Kajarra. Kajarra was the site of the 2008 Birriliburru Native Title Determination.

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Kangaroo Hunting

“[this painting is of] when we shot and killed the kangaroo. We cooked it in the bush, then sit around and wait for the kangaroo to get cooked”

– Noreena Kadibil

Depicted in this work are animals hunted for bush tucker, their habitats, and different hunting methods. 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.

Typically, animals hunted for their kuwiyi (meat) include kirti-kirti (euro kangaroo) and marlu (plains kangaroo), parnajarrpa (sand goanna), kipara (Australian bustard, bush turkey) and karlaya (emu). Lunki (witchetty grub) and wuukurta (honey ants) are dug from tree and bush trunks, or from underground nests. Tuulpara (spring) is considered by Martu as the principal hunting season, when resources are productive and the weather conducive to hunting activities requiring a high degree of stamina. 

Traditional tools used for hunting were carved from wanari (mulga), mulunturu (desert oak), yurungkura (river red gum) and mijarrpa (bloodwoods), and included kurlata (spears), jurna (hitting sticks), and karli (boomerangs). Today, animals are most typically hunted using vehicles and rifles. Nonetheless, carved objects retain enormous social and ceremonial importance in Martu life. Though hunting and gathering implements have been modernised, traditional methods of tracking and the use of fire burning to drive animals from their retreats are still commonly practiced today.