Wanampi: rainbow serpent of the desert



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WANAMPI: RAINBOW SERPENT OF THE DESERT

Wanampi: Rainbow Serpent of the Desert demonstrates different aspects of the Wanampi Tjukurpa found in the country of the Pitjantjatjara speaking Anangu (people)1 in Central Australia. Tjukurpa is an Anangu word that embodies religion, law and morality. The beliefs exist in an unchanging connection of relationships from origins in the period of the Spirit Ancestral beings through countless successive generations to today. By surveying the paintings of senior law men and women who, amongst artists in the region have had the greatest access to traditional life, this exhibition reveals engaging and unique visual sensibilities as important stories are documented in a contemporary context rather than through traditional means. One might expect to see paintings executed in the limited palette favoured by artists from Papunya, further north in the Northern Territory. Instead it is boldness in colour use, and in some cases an expressionist approach to painterly style, that ably projects the deep passions felt by these elders for their beliefs and culture. The Pitjantjatjara artists featured in this exhibition demonstrate a strong artistic voice that sets them apart from other streams of Aboriginal artistic practice. This essay accompanies an exhibition of Indigenous art from the collection of Dr David and Linnett Turner plus one work contributed by the author.
Anangu live in a region generally referred to as the Western Desert.2 Anthropologist Ronald Berndt, described the Western Desert area as stretching across western South Australia into eastern and north-eastern Western Australia.3 This includes part of the Gibson and Great Victoria deserts in addition to the Petermann, Rawlinson, Warburton, Blackstone, Tomkinson, Mann, Everard and Musgrave Ranges.4 Pitjantjatjara speaking Anangu country is mostly in the north-west of South Australia, extending across the border into the Northern Territory to just south of Lake Amadeus, and west to the vicinity of Kaltukatjara (Docker River). The country has a very hot, dry desert climate with short, cool to cold winters and receives a low and unreliable rainfall. 5
The European history of this area covers a moment in time compared with the culturally rich and enduring Aboriginal history of the region. While European history can be traced back to around 1873,6 Aboriginal history extends back thousands of years. In 1933, when Scottish surgeon, Dr Charles Duguid arranged the purchase of a sheep station to establish a mission at Ernabella, he formed a policy of voluntary adaptation. The Presbyterian missionaries learnt the Anangu culture and language, provided regular food, offered the Indigenous people education, skills and employment. This allowed Anangu the freedom to continue living their traditional lifestyle including ceremonial activities if they wished. Some of the artists in this exhibition were born out bush when European impact was minimal. They lived a traditional life, travelling in small family groups across the Western Desert and maintaining a lifestyle rich in ceremonies and traditional observances.7 This developed a strong connection to their country and environment.
Anangu owned art centres throughout the Western Desert support the work of these artists and all the works in this exhibition were purchased from South Australian art centres in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands (APY Lands). The acrylic paintings on canvas were produced at Tjungu Palya Art Centre which services the communities of Watarru, Nyapari and Kanpi, the ink on magnani paper work is from Kaltjiti Arts and Crafts at Fregon and also included in this exhibition is a ceramic piece produced at Ernabella Arts, Australia’s oldest Indigenous arts centre having operated continuously since 1948.
What is Wanampi?

Legends of Great Serpents such as Wanampi belong in one form or another to all Australian Indigenous language groups. Collectively referred to as Rainbow Serpents, they are known by different names in different parts of Australia. Wanampi is the Pitjantjatjara word meaning ‘water serpent, water snake monster, rainbow serpent. Very dangerous creatures believed to live in and guard waterholes.’8


Wanampi are giant snakes with flowing manes, beards and sharp teeth. Often unfriendly and sometimes reaching 100s of metres in length, they may be highly coloured, shedding their skin and changing colour as they travel a long way through the country. It is said that Wanampi assumes the form of a rainbow when offended.9 In its rainbow state, the Wanampi is revered by Anangu,10 but the Wanampi can kill intruders by taking their spirit.11 Just as two rainbows (the primary and secondary rainbows) are frequently seen as an optical phenomenon, Wanampi also are frequently found in pairs in the rock holes of Central Australia.12
Anangu still call out to the Serpent and light a fire before visiting the Piltati rock hole in the Mann Ranges, an important Wanampi site. They will tell the Wanampi that they are friends and that they are approaching and ask access permission from the Wanampi. There are signs that they look for, and if the signs are right they may proceed, but if the signs are not, then they go away. Fires and smoke are used for communication to other families and to the Spiritual Beings as well.13
At Uluru (Ayers Rock) it is important to shout at the Wanampi before approaching.14 However at Uluru, it is forbidden to light a fire in its area or to drink at the waterhole where the Wanampi lives. It is believed by some that the Wanampi, as it is the essential spirit of water, will not go near a fire.15
To Anangu the Wanampi have a real and visible existence as water snakes.16 Known to carry water underground from one source to another, a Wanampi presence may be indicated by a spring.17 The anthropologist Charles Mountford recorded a story of the theft by medicine men from the southern area of the Pitjantjatjara country of the Wanampi from Atila spring (Mt Conner) in the Northern Territory causing the spring to dry up. The men placed the Wanampi in their own country at Owellina (near Mt Woodroffe, Musgrave Ranges) to ensure their own water supply. The former water hole at Owellina then became a running stream.18 These ancestral water snakes have also been active in the formation of creeks by their passage and may also feature in stories principally about Ancestral figures whom they swallow and possibly regurgitate.19 Furthermore it is believed that such watercourses are the embodiment of the Wanampi. The depiction of the coiled up body of a snake, sometimes represented by a spiral, is limited to men’s business and is rarely used by women in mark making, be it in the sand, on bodies or in contemporary art media. Women do however use the meandering form to represent Wanampi.20
The Wanampi is considered of vital importance to Anangu as it gives life by creating water, which is crucial in the desert environment21 therefore it has been essential for knowledge of Wanampi sites and deeds to have been passed on through Tjukurpa to successive generations.
Why are the stories important?

Tjukurpa is the foundation for the lives of Anangu. It is the law which underlies everything they experience. It is a word closely related to dream and denotes the creative time of the ancestors. Time can be divided into two zones with ‘Tjukurpa’ meaning ‘time of the Anangu ancestors’ and ‘Mularrpa’ meaning ‘the present and recent past’ of humans. However ancestral transformations link the two.22 According to Aboriginal belief, all plants, animals, humans and environmental elements exist in an unchanging connection of relationship that can be traced back to the great Spirit Ancestors of the Tjukurpa or Dreaming. These Spirits made epic journeys across the continent, creating rock formations, water courses, trees and gorges whilst identifying plants and animals as sacred species for their descendants. Interactions with humans and animals and the metamorphosis from human to animal form were not uncommon. Behavioural patterns were set as a result of these interactions. The Ancestors are also responsible for the climatic seasons and the resultant water resources, natural reproduction of animal species and the growth of vegetation. In fact, they were responsible for the entire life cycle of Aboriginal people.23


Tjukurpa also means the ‘Law’ because ancestors created the moral imperatives, the appropriate behaviour patterns and normal social functions of the traditional society.24 However, it does not express an explicit moral code; rather the relating of Tjukurpa leaves the listener to make their own judgments.25
The Tjukurpa is continually renewed by its expression in song, dance, and verbal accounts of creation stories that are re-enacted in ceremonial journeys.26 Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people call themselves Anangu which means people that belong to the earth. This is because to the Anangu, their land is an inseparable and central part of their being.27 Their entire lives are spent understanding its nature and how they must relate to it in a proper fashion. Anangu believe that they are born from the earth, that they must tend it when they are alive, and that they will return to it when they die. Their relationship with their land is not of an ownership type. It is more that they are the land. This relationship is expressed as ngura. Ngura can be a camp or community. It is the term for places where Anangu have lived and renewed their existence in dance and song. It is a place usually named where Anangu and their forefathers have lived and died but it is more than just an expression of place and land use. Ngura is their connection to Tjukurpa, which is the time of creation. They will point to a rock or waterhole and say that that is their grandfather.28 Anangu have an obligation to look after and care for their ngura including its inma. Inma is the ceremonial celebration of ngura in dance and song.29
The stories that the artists paint largely relate to their personal totems and is based on Anangu’s ‘ownership’ of ngura. In 1959, Ronald Berndt reported a certain bias towards this patrilineal descent of country with place of birth as the primary connection to one’s country, sometimes with efforts being made to ensure birthing occurs near a particular sacred site.30 Importance may be given to proximity of a waterhole nearest to a person’s birthplace in deciding totems. Moreover, a child’s individual skin markings or other physical peculiarities may help reveal their totemic identity.31 Anangu, pointing to various skin discrepancies such as warts or moles, might say they were marks left by the ancestors at their birthplace.32

For example, exhibiting artist Tiger Palpatja’s relationship is so closely tied to his country he feels the Wanampi come and go from his body as if it were at times part of him. He has revealed a small fleshy dot near his collarbone through which the Wanampi exited his body. 33


However, there are multiple pathways to ‘ownership’ of country and other grounds on which Anangu may claim country include conception at a place associated with an ancestor, place of circumcision, one’s parent’s or grandparent’s links on these grounds, living in the area or death of a relative at a place. A claim is strengthened by the coincidence of a number of these associations. 34
It is important to realise that long family trees are not found in Anangu society. Through the inheritance of a particular totem, the community constantly recreates the ancestral world, so that at death, a person becomes their Dreaming and fades into a collective image of that being.35
Wanampi: Rainbow Serpent of the Desert shows how artists engage with the stories in different ways. Women inherit knowledge which relate to the same ancestral traditions of the men, but different aspects and events within the narrative of a Tjukurpa may be developed.36 Furthermore, because the Tjukurpa is sometimes summarised in the passing on of the story, Anangu may tell the same story in different ways, or on successive occasions alternative aspects may appear that enlarge on the original. This exhibition notably shows the artists demonstrating their individual voices and sensibilities in a contemporary manifestation of their culture by documenting the stories not through traditional means but in a contemporary visual context.
From a non-Anangu point-of-view, the stories gathered for this exhibition may not be considered linear or straightforward. Anangu acquire progressively wider knowledge of the traditions throughout their area as seniority grows. Artists such as Tiger Palpatja37 and Eileen Stevens38 have brought depth of cultural knowledge to their artistic practice. However, comprehensive details of the Tjukurpa they represent are not related by the artists to non-initiated people. Consequently while narratives give recognition to the broad outline of Tjukurpa relating to the Wanampi in the Pitjantjatjara society and their cultural importance, this highlights what we don’t know rather than what we do know. Little has been written about Wanampi, so these stories may be lost if or when cultural knowledge is lost. Accordingly the art movement in the APY Lands and surrounding areas may be seen as an important tool in keeping alive Anangu culture.
A 2007 submission by Ananguku Arts & Culture Aboriginal Corporation to the Senate Committee’s ‘Inquiry into the Indigenous visual arts and craft sector’ emphasised,
that Indigenous “art” is perhaps the prime contemporary medium for senior people to explore, document and share often profound cultural knowledge (of creation, country and family) and as such offers not just reinforcement of that knowledge but also a very significant guard against its loss through non-transmission to younger generations.39

Piltati – the big story

The northern part of the APY Lands is traversed by the Musgrave, Tomkinson, Birksgate, Everard and Mann Ranges. Piltati is the site where great action occurs in an important Wanampi Tjukurpa relating to the formation of the land and rock holes in the eastern part of the Mann Ranges.40



Tiger Palpatja, an important Ngangkari or traditional healer41 was born in the bush at Piltati c1920. He is considered as the number one custodian of the Piltati Wanampi Tjukurpa by the senior Pitjantjatjara men in the area and although the Tjukurpa is usually told by song,42 it is the principle subject of most of Palpatja’s works.
The aspect of the story that he frequently depicts in his paintings, concerns two women who are sisters and married to two brothers who are Wanampi water snakes. The men sit back at camp waiting for the women to return with the food they have gathered during the day but the women do not bring back food to share, instead they eat it out in the bush. This angers the men who turn into their Wanampi form and travel underground to punish the women for their insubordination. They decide to play a practical joke on the sisters to cause them a great deal of useless work. The Wanampi travel to a marsupial hole where the women had been digging and imitate the tracks of a large snake by rubbing the back of a spear thrower on the ground. Then, entering the hole, they leave a little of their tail visible for the women to see. The younger sister excitedly grasps the tail and pulls but the tail keeps slipping from her grasp. The Wanampi repeatedly teases the sister by allowing her to catch his tail, only to wriggle free. The two sisters dig and try to catch the snake for days. They continue to dig but the Wanampi eludes them.43 Sometimes the sisters catch a small carpet snake, enough for their evening meal. These snakes are created by the Wanampi so that the women would not lose heart or grow hungry. In their pursuit, the women dig a trench from Atjaratjara to Piltati, now a watercourse, approximately 25 km long. The Wanampi’s burrow starts to go deeper and many subsidiary branches of the creek are dug in their pursuit, creating the gorge at Piltati, with its creeks and piles of rocks on the valley floor. Changing her tactics, the older sister finally digs a pit ahead of the entrance to the Wanampi’s burrow (now the largest rock hole at Piltati) and uncovers the Wanampi before he can escape. In fright, she pierces the side of the Wanampi with her digging stick as he coils his huge body around her. The other Wanampi chases and swallows the younger sister, while the injured snake, in great paint, kills and eats the elder sister at the mouth of the Piltati Gorge. The injured Wanampi is now embodied as a bloodwood tree with a dry limb protruding from one side which is the sister’s digging stick and the trunk is covered with lumps and excrescences which are the body of the woman still showing through the skin of the snake.44
Piltati is in the hills close to the community of Nyapari, where one can sometimes see the Wanampi rise up behind the hills45 and if one stands on the hills behind the nearby community of Kanpi, the path left by the Wanampi is visible in the landscape.46
As discussed earlier, details may differ from artist to artist and from painting to painting. Considered a senior law woman in the community of Amata, Ruby Tjangawa Williams was born c1940 in the bush south of Wingelina (in Western Australia) and in Wanampi Creation Story 2005 (# 9) she depicts what she describes as the women’s version of events. When the men turn into Wanampi, they make a hole in the creek and surround it with a coloured pattern on the ground before hiding from the sisters. On its discovery, the sisters light a large fire from which the smoke spreads everywhere, including into the snake hole, before they are swallowed by their husbands.47 Likewise, in Wanampi 2009 (# 3), Tiger Palpatja refers to the smoke. In this work he describes the involvement of Malilu, the blind mother of the two sisters. Whilst her daughters were away, she smelt the smoke and followed in that direction, eventually being killed by another tribe.48
In other exhibited works concerning the Piltati story, some Anangu say that the women die at the hand of the Wanampi and others say that they turn into Wanampi as well. Kunmanara Russell in Kuntjanu Tjukurpa, (#11) depicts the sisters having been turned into water snakes by the men so that they could not escape.49 Tjimpuna Williams, in her artist statement regarding her ceramic piece in the exhibition,(#12) concurs that the men turned the sisters into Wanampi, however it was in order to take them as wives. Interestingly, Tjimpuna Williams uses the snake scales as the dominant pattern on the ceramic surface. 50
Eileen Yaritja Stevens was born in the bush at Makiti around 1915. Her father was a Yankunytjatjara man and her mother a Ngaanyatjarra woman and Eileen considered herself ‘in the middle’ as a Pitjantjatjara woman.51 When Eileen Stevens was a young woman she and her husband worked at the Ernabella Mission but later they came to live at Nyapari in Eileen’s husband’s country.52 Stevens painted the Piltati story due to matrimonial inheritance from her late husband and the custodian rights inherited by her son, Keith.53
In Piltati 2008 (#7) the two brothers are depicted drawing sacred designs on the cave walls and having inma (ceremonial singing) whilst the women dig for bettong and collect bush foods. Note the repeated curved pattern (known as walka)54 which is used in women’s body painting.55 Although this walka is used extensively by painters across the APY Lands, Jennifer Isaacs in her book, Desert Crafts: Anangu Maruku Punu, states this women’s design has been known to represent the sand piles the two women made when burrowing. Furthermore, it is said that the loose earth dug up by the two sisters form the sand hills that still exist in the Piltati country today.56
In statements accompanying many of her Wanampi paintings, Eileen Stevens’ story describes the two sisters travelling to Yalata, 600 kilometres south near the coast of South Australia.57 Amanda Dent, former art co-ordinator at Tjungu Palya Arts at Nyapari, has noted that accounts from other artists at the art centre hold that the Tjukurpa Track or connection of stories surrounding the Wanampi Tjukurpa at Piltati stretch from Piltati 700 kilometres southeast to the northern tip of Lake Gairdner.58 It is evident that the women travel a long way in search of food while the men stay at camp. Although not evident in this exhibition, sometimes Stevens depicts four snakes representing both the two men and the two women.
The Wanampi can be dangerous

Maringka Baker was born in the bush around 1952 at Kaliumpil, itself an important ceremonial site. In Pukara 2008 (# 4), she depicts country further west as do three additional paintings in this exhibition by Iyawi Wikilyiri (# 6 & 10) and Winmati Morris (# 1). Pukara is a sacred place around which people must be very careful. It is a site known for its abundance of honey grevillea59 south of Irruntyju (Wingelina). The Wanampi Tjukurpa links Pukara to places in far western Western Australia with an unfolding narrative at different sites along the way.60 The Pukara Tjukurpa concerns two Wanampi, a father and a son. The son is a little disabled in some way and Anangu tease him. One day he reacts in anger by eating all (sic) the Anangu and the people take revenge by spearing him in his side. He and his father then travel a 1000 kilometres west to country around Newman in Western Australia. After spending some time over there they return to the Pukara rock hole. This is a men’s place61 and it is considered a very dangerous place.62


The boldness of colour

The colours employed in these paintings by the Pitjantjatjara artists cannot be merely appreciated on a visual or decorative level. It may be held that Anangu’s use of the extended palette available with acrylic paints results from their perception of the potency of colour as a symbol of their many links to emotion, space, sound, odour and environment.63 For instance, variations of colour that distinguish foods in the rough of the bush, the blue of the sky and water, the purple core of a bloodwood tree or the green of the lushness of plant resources may take on spiritual as well as practical applications when Anangu relate to their country and Tjukurpa through their art. It has been suggested that red is considered both sacred and dangerous. Red ochre is a sacred substance possibly representing transformed Ancestral bodily fluids making this association more important than its intrinsic colour for Anangu artists.64 All these colours are used to create works that demonstrate the Pitjantjatjara artists’ connection to their country and culture thus representing on the canvas multifarious levels of story, place, morality and kinship.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Whilst a large amount of this research was conducted in 2006/7 during the course of my Masters of Arts degrees, for ongoing excellent curatorial and editorial advice, as always I must thank my friend Susan Jenkins from the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art. In addition, the content of this essay would be bereft without the personal insights and valued assistance of former art centre co-ordinators, Sara Twigg-Patterson (Tjala Arts in Amata), Amanda Dent (Tjungu Palya in Nyapari) and Mary Knights (Irrunytju in Wingellena) in 2006/7. Also artist, Eileen Yaritja Stevens (who died in 2008) gave me great insight into her work at the opening of her solo exhibition at Vivien Anderson Gallery in Melbourne in 2007. Furthermore, I wish to thank Bill Edwards, (former Superintendent of Ernabella Mission and Parish Minister at Fregon and Amata) for the frequent and helpful responses to my enquiries via email and telephone. Further assistance has been provided by the directors and staff of the following commercial galleries exhibiting the paintings of Pitjantjatjara artists, Marshall Arts Gallery in Adelaide, Chapman’s Gallery in Canberra and Art Images Gallery in Adelaide. A/Profs Linnett Sanchez and David Turner have acquired an extraordinary collection of works produced in the APY Lands since 2003 and thanks must go to them for their generosity of time, finances and the loaning of works of art to enable the mounting of this exhibition. Above all, my huge respect and thanks must be given to the Pitjantjatjara artists who have shared their cultural heritage through the production of such magnificent work.


All care has been taken to produce accurate spelling of place names and sites, but sources tend to vary considerably in their usage. Furthermore, the Tjukurpa versions have been documented in a cross-cultural environment therefore it is possible that some of the meaning may have been lost or misconstrued in the research process.
Ann Axelby

MA (Studies in Art History)

MA (Curatorial & Museum Studies)

BA (Instrumental, Performance & Teaching)

1 Specifically, Western Desert language speaking person, see Tjilari, A. Peter, R. Wanatjura, E. Lynch, A. Rive, L. & Burke, J. (eds), Ngangkari Work – Anangu Way: Traditional Healers of Central Australia, Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council Aboriginal Corporation, Alice Springs, 2003, p. 31.

2 Brokensha, P. The Pitjantjatjara and Their Crafts, The Aboriginal Arts Board, Sydney, 1975, p. 5.

3 Berndt R. M., ‘The Concept of the Tribe in the Western Desert of Australia’, in Oceania, 1959, vol. 30, no. 2, p. 81.

4 Brokensha, P., loc. cit.

5 http://www.denr.sa.gov.au/biodiversity/pdfs/biosurvey/anangu/anangu_pt1.pdf accessed 10 October 2007.

6 The earliest known explorers in the Pitjantjatjara language area were W.C. Gosse who named Ayers Rock and Mt Conner in 1873 and W.E.P. Giles who named the Lake Amadeus, the Petermann Ranges and Mt Olga between 1872 and 1874. R. Layton, Uluru: An Aboriginal History of Ayers Rock, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1989, p. 54.

7 Tjungu Palya promotional material, Nyapari, 2006.

8 Cliff Goddard (compiled by), Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara to English Dictionary, revised 2nd edition, IAD Press, Alice Springs, 1996, p. 215.

9 J. Isaacs, Australian Dreaming: 40,000 Years of Aboriginal History, New Holland Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd, 2005, p. 42.

10 Diana Young, The Colours of Things: Memory, Materiality and an Anthropology of the Senses in North Western South Australia, thesis (Ph.D), University College London, 2001, p. 111.

11 J. Isaacs, loc. cit.

12 Diana Young, 2001, op. cit., , p. 42.

13 Pers. Com., Amanda Dent, telephone, 18 September, 2007. Charles Mountford’s account of being introduced to the Wanampi at the Piltati rock hole can be found in Mountford, C.P. Brown Men and Red Sand, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1948, p. 119.

14 Diana Young, 2001, op. cit., p. 110.

15 A. W. Reed, Aboriginal Myths, Legends and Fables, William Heinmann Australia, N.S.W., 1993, p. 80.

16 Diana Young, 2001, loc. cit.

17 Robert Layton, Uluru: An Aboriginal History of Ayers Rock, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1989, p. 25.

18 C. Mountford, Nomads of the Australian Desert, Rigby, Adelaide, 1976, p. 446.

19 Diana Young, loc. cit.

20 Diana Young, 2001, op. cit., p. 111.

21 Diana Young, loc. cit.

22 Keen, I., Aboriginal Economy and Society; Australia on the Threshold of Colonisation, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.217.

23 J. Isaacs, 2005, op. cit., p. 33.

24 ibid, p. 218.

25 P. Sutton, ‘Dreamings’ in Sutton, P. (ed.) Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia, Viking, Ringwood, 1988, p. 18.

26 H.A.L.T. (Healthy Aboriginal Life Team), Anangu Way, Nganampa Health Council, Alice Springs, 1991, p. 2.

27 Toyne, P. and Vachon, D., Growing Up the Country: The Pitjantjatjara struggle for their land, McPhee Gribble/ Penguin Books, Victoria, 1984, p.5.

28 Ibid.

29 H.A.L.T., loc. cit.

30 Berndt R. M., ‘The Concept of the Tribe in the Western Desert of Australia’, in Oceania, vol. 30, no 2, 1959, p.96.

31 Keen, I., 2004, op. cit., p.149.

32 Ibid.

33 Creagh, S., ‘Tiger, Painting Bright’, Sydney Morning Herald, 07-04-06, p. 15.

34 Keen, op. cit., p.281.

35 Layton, R. Uluru: An Aboriginal History of Ayers Rock, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1989, p. 15.

36 R. Layton, 1989,op. cit., p. 45.

37 Tiger Palpatja, born circa 1920.

38 Eileen Stevens, circa 1920 - 2008.

39 http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/Committee/ecita_ctte/indigenous_arts/submissions/sub46.pdf accessed 27 October 2007.

40 Tjala Arts, Wanampi Creation Story, Certificate of Authenticity for image catalogue 490-07, (Tiger Palpatja).

41 Tjilari, A., Peter, R., Wanatjura, E., Lynch, A., Rive, L. and Burke, J. (eds), 2003, op. cit., p.20.

42 http://www.abc.net.au/message/blackarts/telegraph/thunder/keith.htm accessed 29 October 2007.

43 Tjala Arts, Wanampi Creation Story, Certificate of Authenticity for image catalogue no 334-06, (Tiger Palpatja).

44 Tjala Arts, Wanampi Creation Story, Certificate of Authenticity for image catalogue 490-07, (Tiger Palpatja). A similar account can be found in C. P. Mountford, Brown Men and Red Sand, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1948, p. 116.

45 Tjungu Palya, Certificate of Authenticity for image catalogue 06372, (Ginger Wikilyiri).

46 Tjungu Palya, Certificate of Authenticity for image catalogue 07064. (Jimmy Baker)

47 Tjala Arts, Wanampi Creation Story, Certificate of Authenticity for image 571-05. (Ruby Williamson)

48 Tjunga Palya, Certificate of Authenticity for image catalogue 09423. (Tiger Palpatja).

49 Kaltjiti Arts, Certificate of Authenticity for image catalogue KAL MRU 4069 D002 10/30SP

50 Ernabella Arts, Certificate of Authenticity for catalogue TW2310-07. (Tjimpuna Williams)

51 C. Nicholls, catalogue essay in Eileen Yaritja Stevens: Minyma Kutju- One Woman, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne, 2007, unpaged.

52http://www.vivienandersongallery.com/artists/eileen_yaritja_stevens/bio.html?PHPSESSID=df0f0a3af5dc8bd83c3c2b7cb5a4d4ad

53 Pers. Com., Amanda Dent, Melbourne, 6 October 2007.

54 In Pitjantjatjara language, walka means ‘meaningful mark’, but is also used to define a decorative and organic design unique to Anangu artists. Ernabella Arts Inc., Brochure, Ernabella, Desert Cool, PMB Ernabella, S.A. 2002.

55 Pers. Com., Sara Twigg-Patterson, Adelaide Festival Centre, 15 January 2006.

56 J. Isaacs, Desert Crafts: Anangu Maruku Punu, Doubleday, Australia, 1992, p. 37.

57 Tjungu Palya, Piltati, Certificate of Authenticity for catalogue image 06360 (Eileen Stevens).

58 Pers. Com., Amanda Dent, telephone, 18 September 2007.

59 Tjungu Palya, Pukara 2008, Certificate of Authenticity for catalogue image 08546 (Iyawi Wikilyiri).

60 Pers. Com., Mary Knights, Adelaide, 2 November 2007.

61 Pers. Com., Amanda Dent, telephone, 18 September 2007.

62 Tjungu Palya, Kaliny-kalinypa 2008, Certificate of Authenticity for catalogue image 08003(Iyawi Wikilyiri).

63 To further understand Anangu’s relationship with colour see Diana Young, The Colours of Things: Memory, Materiality and an Anthropology of the Senses in North Western South Australia, thesis (Ph.D), University College London, 2001, p. 48.

64 Ibid


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