This dreaming tells about a women’s ceremony. Only the women know this dreaming. It talks about travelling from north to south, east and west teaching all the young kids. They all teach people from different skin groups, so that the dreamings are passed along to the young children. (Warnayaka Art Centre)
Warlpiri have 16 skin names in their “skin system”. This is a name predetermined by the skin names of the prior generation. Warlpiri also organise themselves into 4 groups, where 4 skin names will group together. This organisation of peoples is used in ceremony and in law and is practised in all important decision-making processes still today. In this work, Nungarrayi has depicted 16 groups of ladies at ceremony.
This painting depicts a young girls initiation ceremony. There are eight female kinship groups in the Australian desert. The artist is a senior elder of the Nungarayi kinship group. All Nungarayi daughters are Napaltjarri's. During this special time, the older women of the Nungarayi and Napaltjarri skin groups pass sacred information to the young women of the tribe. This ceremony represents the girl’s transition from childhood into womanhood. The straight lines represent the sacred dancing sticks used during the women's ceremonies. The large U shapes are the older women who are teaching the young girls (the smaller shaped groups) and watching over them to ensure they listen to the information being handed down to them. This ceremony takes place each year at an isolated women's Dreaming site called Duck Pond in the Northern Territory. Duck Ponds is a sacred site situated 100kms south east of Lajamanu. The area becomes rich in water and bird life with the onset of rain.
Lily Hargraves Nungarrayi (1930 - 2019) was one of the old desert walkers, born in the Tanami Desert in her country near Jilla Well (Chilla Well). When, in 1950, the Warlpiri population at Yuendemu had outgrown the settlement’s housing capabilities, Nungarrayi moved to the settlement of Lajamanu along with 1000 others. A tiny, very isolated point in the north of the Warlpiri estate, ten hour’s drive south of Darwin and eight hours north-west of Alice Springs. Here, Nungarrayi resided until her death in 2019.
Lily Yirdingali Jurrah Hargraves Nungarrayi belongs among the ranks of Australia’s greatest Indigenous artists. Nungarrayi was ferocious, painting against the deliberate erasure of her culture, she was among the last in possession of some key aspects of Warlpiri sacred knowledge.
Every painting in Nungurray’s legacy seems to contain an earnest thought that a return to some dignified form of traditional life may be possible. Her painting practice was an effort toward recording a Warlpiri history that was at risk of erasure, for a Warlpiri people that, before colonisation, had had no need for a method to document its past.
