Mina Mina is a highly significant ceremonial site for Napangardi and Napanangka women, located approximately 600 kilometres west of Yuendumu, near Lake Mackay and the Western Australian border. The landscape includes a dry marluri (salt lake or claypan), soakages (mulju), sandhills, and stands of kurrkara (desert oak).
The Mina Mina Jukurrpa is a foundational Warlpiri Dreaming that carries important knowledge about ritual practice, Country, and the roles of women and men. Custodians of this Jukurrpa are Napangardi and Napanangka women, together with Japangardi and Japanangka men, who may depict aspects of the story in painting.
The Dreaming tells of ancestral women (karnta) who travelled from west to east, dancing, gathering bush foods, and creating significant sites along their journey. At Mina Mina, their dancing raised a great dust cloud that swept up the walyankarna (snake ancestors), linking the women’s Dreaming with the ngarlkirdi (witchetty grub) Dreaming. Through this encounter, the women gained knowledge that continues to be practised by Warlpiri women today.
In contemporary Warlpiri painting, Mina Mina Jukurrpa is represented through traditional iconography: sinuous lines for ngalyipi (snakevine), straight lines for karlangu (digging sticks), circles for jintiparnta (desert truffle), and wavy forms for majardi (hairstring skirts).
