Mina Mina Jukurrpa (Mina Mina Dreaming) - Sarah Sims Napaljarri

Mina Mina is an extremely important ceremonial site for Napangardi and Napanangka women, located approximately 600 kilometres west of Yuendumu, just east of Lake Mackay and the Western Australian border. The landscape includes a marluri (salt lake or claypan), mulju (soakages), sandhills, and extensive stands of kurrkara (desert oak). The Mina Mina Jukurrpa is a key source of Warlpiri ritual knowledge and social organisation, particularly in relation to gendered ceremonial roles. Custodians (kirda) of this Country are Napangardi and Napanangka women, together with Japangardi and Japanangka men, who may depict aspects of this Jukurrpa in their paintings.

The Mina Mina Jukurrpa tells of ancestral karnta (women) who travelled from west to east. At Mina Mina they danced, causing karlangu (digging sticks) to rise from the ground, which they carried as they journeyed on, adorned with majardi (hairstring skirts), feathers, and seed necklaces, and anointed with minyira (fat) to enhance their ritual power. Their dancing created a dust cloud that swept up the walyankarna (snake ancestors), linking the women’s Dreaming with the ngarlkirdi Jukurrpa (witchetty grub Dreaming) and passing on vital knowledge about locating and preparing bush foods still practised by Warlpiri women today.

As the women continued east, they created and transformed many sites, including Kimayi, Wakakurrku and Lungkardajarra, where they eventually split into groups travelling east and north before returning to Mina Mina, drawn back by homesickness for their desert oak Country. The Jukurrpa encodes important teachings about ritual authority and social order. In contemporary Warlpiri painting, this narrative is expressed through established iconography, including sinuous lines for ngalyipi (snakevine), circles for jintiparnta (desert truffle), straight lines for karlangu, and wavy forms for majardi (hairstring skirts).