Aboriginal knowledge is often woven in to traditional beliefs or "Dreamings," which are generally passed on orally through stories, rather than on charts and in research papers.
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He went to Australia and documented the Australian Aboriginal practice of singing your way through the wilderness through songlines or dreamings, and that became a huge foundational concept of 'Black Lake.
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Her main Dreamings are Kngwelye (dog) associated with Alhekulyele and Yeperenye, Ntyarlke and Utnerrengatye (caterpillar species).
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The Aboriginal Memorial decorations reflect traditional clan designs and significant dreamings for which the artists had responsibility.
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The first international solo exhibition of Kngwarreye was held at the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam in 1999 by the Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings.
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Marett, Allan (2005). Songs, Dreamings, and Ghosts: the Wangga of North Australia. Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, Connecticut. p. 1. . The songs are performed publicly.
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Since first learning painting through an adult education course in 1986, Peggy Rockman has painted particular 'dreamings', including Ngatijirri (budgerigar), Warna (snake), Laju and Ngarlu. Her work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She has co-written Yimikirli: Warlpiri Dreamings and Histories, a collection of texts in the Warlpiri language with English translations.
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An image based on a triptych by Petrick, Bush Berries, appears on the cover of a book on the visual perception of motion, Motion Vision. Central Australian artists frequently paint particular "dreamings", or stories, for which they have responsibility or rights. These stories are used to pass "important knowledge, cultural values and belief systems" from generation to generation. Paintings by Petrick portray two different groups of dreamings, rendered in two distinct styles.
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Since Clifford died Cassidy painted what he called "circle" dreaming which was part of powerful dreaming story that was used in the sand paintings to bring Clifford home. These paintings were interspersed with the Possum Dreaming which he inherited from Clifford. These two dreamings were dramatically different in their construction, composition and colours to all of his earlier paintings. Cassidy was one of the first generation artists who painted important and powerful dreamings that preserved his culture.
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Mona's dreamings are Ngatijiiri (budgerigar) and Warna (snake). In addition to painting, Mona has also worked in pottery, with her work in both media being exhibited by the National Gallery of Victoria.
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The wider Camooweal area was inhabited by the Indjalandji-Dhidhanu People for thousands of years before the arrival of the Europeans in 1860s. The aboriginal people utilised the park area and the Georgina River for trade with their tribal neighbours. Till date, the Indjalandji-Dhidhanu People believe that the route is traversed by Dreamings, the routes covered by ancestral spirits who shaped the landscape. The Dreamings have created various sites of significance to the Indjalandji- Dhidhanu People in the park.
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Biddy Rockman began painting at Lajamanu, Northern Territory, in the central desert, west of Tennant Creek, in 1986. Western Desert artists such as Biddy will frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights. Johnson's biographical survey of artists in 1994 identified her country as Jarlawangu, and that she painted Ngatijirri (budgerigar) and Warna dreamings, stories that belong to Napaljarri and Nungarrayi women. Works by Biddy Rockman are held by major institutions, including the National Gallery of Victoria.
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A couple of witchetty grubs. The word witchetty comes from Adynyamathanha , "hooked stick" and , "grub". Traditionally it is rare for men to dig for them. Witchetty grubs feature as Dreamings in many Aboriginal paintings.
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Dreamings associated with the Napaljarri women at Yuendumu include budgerigar, bush onion, witchetty grub and honey ant. These have been portrayed in paintings by artists such as Lucy Napaljarri Kennedy and Helen Nelson Napaljarri.
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It received a grant for development from the government in 1978. The area around Kunytjanu is connected with several Dreamings. The waterhole itself is associated with the , the Dreaming of the water-snake or Rainbow Serpent.
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For example, the late artist from the Papunya movement, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, painted ceremonial dreamings relating to circumcision and love stories, and lessons for "naughty boys". His daughters Gabriella Possum and Michelle Possum have tended to paint the "Seven Sisters" Dreaming or the Pleiades, as they inherited that Dreaming through the maternal line. Consequently, they have painted their "Grandmother's Country", which is an expression of their inherited ownership of the land through knowledge of the dreamings. Clifford and his daughters have not painted the same subjects; Clifford has never painted the "Seven Sisters Dreaming".
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By tribal law, his daughters are not allowed to see male tribal ceremonies, let alone paint them. Dreamings as "property" have also been used by a few Aboriginal tribes to argue before the High Court of Australia their title over traditional tribal land. Paintings of Dreamings, travelling journeys and ceremonies tend to depict the locations where they occur. There have been cases in which 10-metre-long paintings have been presented to the Court, as evidence of the tribe's title deed after terra nullius was struck down during the tenure of Chief Justice Gerard Brennan.
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Several bands made up one clan, which also had a defined territory and was united by claimed descent from a single ancestor, and several clans made up one tribe, of which there were around 48 in South Australia by the time of European settlement. There was little uniting the clans of an Aboriginal tribe aside from their common language. The Aboriginal tribal groups all had Dreamings, which were religious traditions tying them to the land. The Dreamings serve as both stories about their ancestors and as the foundation of their societal laws.
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Western Desert artists such as Molly will frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights. Molly's dreamings relate to the seven Napaljarri sisters, and Kaarkurutintya (Lake Macdonald). Molly participated in a group exhibition at Michael Eather's Fire-Works Gallery, and a solo exhibition at Sydney's Hogarth Gallery, both in 2004. She participated in numerous group and solo shows since that time. One of her paintings appeared as the cover art for the 2005 monograph ‘Peopling’ the Cleland Hills: Aboriginal history in western Central Australia, 1850–1980.
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Western Desert artists such as Helen will frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights, which in Helen's case include Ngarlkirdi (witchetty grub) and Wardapi (goanna) dreamings. Her paintings have been exhibited in the United States, and are held in the collections of the South Australian Museum and Art Gallery. Helen Nelson is one of a group of authors who wrote bilingual works in Walpiri and English for the Bilingual Resources Development Unit. In 1984 she co-wrote Nyurruwiyi kuja kalalu-jana mardarnu pirltirrka = Childbirth in the old days.
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Australian anthropologists willing to generalise suggest Aboriginal myths still being performed across Australia by Aboriginal peoples serve an important social function amongst their intended audiences: justifying the received ordering of their daily lives; helping shape peoples' ideas; and assisting to influence others' behaviour. In addition, such performance often continuously incorporates and "mythologises" historical events in the service of these social purposes in an otherwise rapidly changing modern world. > It is always integral and common... that the Law (Aboriginal law) is > something derived from ancestral peoples or Dreamings and is passed down the > generations in a continuous line. While... entitlements of particular human > beings may come and go, the underlying relationships between foundational > Dreamings and certain landscapes are theoretically eternal ... the > entitlements of people to places are usually regarded strongest when those > people enjoy a relationship of identity with one or more Dreamings of that > place.
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Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings (AGOD) is an art gallery in Cheltenham, Melbourne, Australia, owned and run by art collector Hank Ebes. Founded in 1990, it was one of the first galleries in Melbourne to be devoted entirely to Aboriginal art.
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Muurrbay in Gumbaynggir means the white fig tree and plays an important part in the Gumbaynggir Yuludarla (Gumbaynggir Dreamings). The Gumbaynggirr made sweets (bush lollies, called jaaning) by rolling tender shoots from the Acacia irrorata in the sap oozing from the tree.
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Norah first painted in 1986, assisting her husband, but was creating works in her own right by 1987. As of 2004 she was living in Yuendumu and painted for the Indigenous art centre there, Warlukurlangu Artists. Western Desert artists such as Norah will frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights, and in Norah's case these have included Karntjarra (Two Women), Ngaru (bush plum) Ngarlkirdi (witchetty grub) and Pangkurlangu (Giant) dreamings. She has also painted a series of works based on the Yiwarra (Milky Way) dreaming, with the permission of that dreaming's senior custodian at Yuendumu, Paddy Sims.
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The claim was made by members of the seven groups that each has responsibility for different sites and dreamings in the area.Gray 1997, p. 17. In 1997, the Aboriginal Land Commissioner recommended that Muckaty Station be handed back to the traditional owners,Gray 1997, p. 70.
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Western Desert artists such as Ada will frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights. Ada paints Warumpi Mother and Daughter dreaming, Women Dancing, Yalka (bush onion) dreaming, and stories associated with black plum, wurrampi (honey ant) and Ngapa (water).
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Kathleen Petyarre (born Kweyetwemp Petyarre; c. 1940 – 24 November 2018) was an Australian Aboriginal artist. Her art refers directly to her country and her Dreamings. Petyarre's paintings have occasionally been compared to the works of American Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, and even to those of J.M.W. Turner.
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Like a number of the other central and western desert women in the region, Tjunkiya was introduced to painting through the Minyma Tjukurrpa (Women's Dreaming) painting project in the mid-1990s. Along with sister Wintjiya and other women, she participated in a painting camp in 1994 which resulted in "a series of very large collaborative canvases of the group's shared Dreamings". Western Desert artists such as Tjunkiya frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have responsibility or rights. In this case, twenty-five women were involved in planning the works, which included three canvases that were 3 metres square, as well as two that were 3 by 1.5 metres, and Tjunkiya and Wintjiya performed a ceremonial dance as part of the preparations.
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Since the 1970s Wintjiya had created artefacts such as ininti seed necklaces, mats and baskets, using traditional artistic techniques including weaving of spinifex grass. When the women of Kintore, including sisters Wintjiya and Tjunkiya, started creating canvasses, their works bore little resemblance to those of their male peers (who had been painting for some years). Wintjiya's first efforts were collaborative, as one of a group of women who created murals on the Kintore Women's Centre walls in 1992. She then joined a painting camp with other women from Kintore and Haasts Bluff to produce "a series of very large collaborative canvases of the group's shared Dreamings" (dreamings are stories used to pass "important knowledge, cultural values and belief systems" from generation to generation).
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He has made several different versions of this painting since. Like most other artists from this region, Teamay also paints the ' associated with his country. These are stories about his spiritual ancestors from the Dreamtime and their journeys across the land. Teamay's paintings focus on the Seven Sisters, and the Liru and Kuniya Dreamings.
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Many symbols depicted personal totems and Dreamings, and others more general Dreamtime creation stories. When some of the elder men saw what the children were doing, they felt the subject matter was more suited to adults. They began creating a mural depicting the Honey Ant Dreaming. Traditionally, Papunya is the epicenter of the Honey Ant Dreaming, where songlines converge.
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In midlife, Weir began to explore Aboriginal artistic traditions. She first painted in 1989 at the age of about 45. Five years later in 1994, she was one of a group of ten Utopia women who traveled to study batik in Indonesia. Her paintings include representations of particular plants and "dreamings", inspired by deep Aboriginal traditions.
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If they are the owners, then the managers will be from the Napurrurla / Tjupurrula skin name group, and vice versa. Dreamings are associated with particular skin names and individuals. Jimmy Jungurrayi relates the story Patilirrikirli, a budgerigar dreaming associated with a location called Patilirri. This dreaming is specific to the Napaljarri / Tjapaljarri and Nungarrayi / Jungarrayi pairings of skin names.
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Nora Andy began painting around 1987 in Alice Springs. Western Desert artists such as Nora will frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights, with bush onion dreaming being a theme in her work. The story is associated with her father's country around Haasts Bluff. Nora Andy's work is held by Artbank.
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Tjapaltjarri later moved west to Ilili, a pioneer in the country camp movement, although in his later years he has spent much time in Alice Springs. He travelled to New York City in 1988 for the opening of the "Dreamings" show at the Asia Society and, along with Michael Nelson Jagamarra, created a sand painting as part of the exhibition.
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An American boy, Cody (Thomas), whose parents have died, lives in Australia with his guardian, Gaza. Cody is very imaginative, inventive, and inquisitive. He builds things in his garage, including a railbike which he uses to get around. Cody comes across some strange events happening in Devil's Knob national park associated with an Aboriginal myth about "frog Dreamings" and Bunyips, terrifying water monsters that prey on humans.
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His traditional country covered a large tract of land (several thousand square miles) and included many important dreaming sites. His artwork and art themes were taken from his country and included caterpillar, men's love story, possum and men's dreamings. Cassidy's full brother was Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, one of the most famous of all "first generation" contemporary Indigenous Australian artists. Clifford died in mid-2002.
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Her batik work is of the classic Ernabella style, which eschews the Indonesian use of repeated block printed designs in favour of hand-drawn freehand designs or "walka". These "walka" are pure design and do not refer to, or contain reference to, dreamings or "tjukurpa". Tapaya is a member of the Pitjantjatjara people. She was born in the desert in the far northwest of South Australia.
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The Pleiades also figures in the Dreamings of several language groups. For example, in the central desert region, they are said to be seven sisters fleeing from the unwelcome attentions of a man represented by some of the stars in Orion. The close resemblance of this to Greek mythology is believed to be coincidental — there is no evidence of any cultural connection. The Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation explain them in the Karatgurk story.
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2006 was also marked by an artist's residency in Copenhagen, shared with fellow Indigenous artist Lilly Kelly Napangardi, whom she had known since they attended school together in the 1960s. Collections holding her works include the National Gallery of Australia. She has had solo exhibitions with private galleries in Sydney and Perth. Western Desert artists such as Ngoia Pollard frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights.
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Topsy, and her sister Takariya, both began to paint in 1996, while her younger brother Warlimirrnga Tjapaltjarri had begun painting in 1987. She has been represented by Warlayirti Artists, the Indigenous art centre at Balgo, Western Australia. Western Desert artists such as Topsy will frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights. In Topsy's case, these stories include Snake Dreaming and Minyma Kutjarra (or Two Women) Dreaming.
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Throughout his thirty-year painting career he was an idiosyncratic figure, renowned for wearing a stockman's hat and charming all who he met with ambiguous sincerity. Seemingly oblivious to the financial and material aspects of life, immersion in his Dreamings triggered by his best paintings give the viewer a taste of ancient knowledge, captivating western audiences with a rare comfort about their role as commodities. Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula died at his home in Alice Springs on 12 February 2001.
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The Hermannsburg painters' work is characterised by soft hues, usually water colours, of their Western Arrernte landscape, which European settlers named the Western Macdonnell Ranges. Previously, Western Arrernte people had only used art in a ceremonial sense, as topographical interpretations of their country and their particular Dreamings, painted using symbols. Early works by Albert also conveyed this spiritual connection with the land. They shared an intimate knowledge of the land on which they had lived for thousands of years.
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Michael paints Possum, Snake, Two Kangaroos, Flying Ant and Yam Dreamings for the area around Pikilyi. He won the National Aboriginal Art Award in September 1984 In 1987 an 8.2 m (27 ft) long painting by Jagamarra was installed in the foyer of the Sydney Opera House. He was introduced to Queen Elizabeth II in 1988 at the opening of the New Parliament House as the designer of the 196 square metre mosaic in the forecourt of the building.
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Indigenous artists from remote central Australia, particularly the central and western desert area, frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights.Johnson (1994), pp. 7–12. Best known amongst these are the works of the Papunya Tula painters and of Utopia artist Emily Kngwarreye. The patterns portrayed by central Australian artists, such as those from Papunya, originated as translations of traditional motifs marked out in sand, boards or incised into rock.
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Daniels wrote a dreaming narrative, titled “The Magic Fire of Warlukurlangu”, which was published by Kingswood Working Title Press in 2003. The book was aimed towards primary school aged children and retells a traditional tale of Daniels' Dreaming area. This book has been used to educate non-Indigenous children of the Dreamings and their significance. In her service to the community, Daniels was a loyal member of the Yuendumu night patrol, as locals were concerned about the way in which Aboriginal issues become processed through bureaucracies.
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The Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings (AGOD) first opened in a small gallery space on Bourke Street, Melbourne. It was established as one of the first Aboriginal art galleries in Melbourne. The collection was originally made up of only a couple of hundred paintings from Aboriginal communities Utopia and Alice Springs, belonging to Aboriginal Art collector and gallery founder, Hank Ebes. The growth of the collection meant that in early 1990 the gallery moved premises to a larger space down the street, where it remained until 2008.
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His 1985 painting "Five Stories" was one of the most reproduced works of Australian Art in the 1980s. It appeared on the cover of the catalogue of the Asia Society's "Dreamings" exhibition []which toured the USA in 1988-90. Jagamarra travelled to New York City with Billy Stockman Japaltjarri for the opening of the show. In 1989 he had his first solo exhibition in Melbourne at the Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi and participated in the BMW Art Car Project by hand painting an M3 race car.
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From the Pintupi/Luritja language group, Daisy Jugadai was one of a range of artists who came to painting through the Ikuntji Women's Centre in the early 1990s. She is credited with a significant role in the centre's establishment. She began with screen printing and linocut printmaking, but quickly shifted to acrylic painting, producing many of her best works during the mid-1990s. Western Desert artists such as Daisy Jugadai will frequently paint particular 'dreamings' or Tjukurrpa for which they have personal responsibility or rights.
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Bush plum dreaming represents a plant of the central Australian desert which is "a source of physical and spiritual sustenance, reminding [the local Indigenous people] of the sacredness of [their] country". These paintings are undertaken with red, blue and orange dots that represent the fruit at different stages in its development. She also paints women’s ceremonies (Awelye) and dreamings, and these are created using rows of coloured dots and include representations of women's ceremonial iconography. Journalist Zelda Cawthorne described Petrick as one of the "finest contemporary Aboriginal artists".
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All centered on themes of heroic martyrdom by men pledged to defend their native land against a tyrannical invader. As one line goes, "There’s grandeur in graves, there’s glory in gloom." Within the limits of the Southern Confederacy and the Catholic Church in the United States, no poet was more popular. But he actually penned a far greater number of verses about his faith and spirituality, such as "The Seen and the Unseen" and "Sea Dreamings," which reached a nationwide audience in The Saturday Evening Post (January 13, 1883, p. 13).
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"Dreaming" is now also used as a term for a system of totemic symbols, so that an Aboriginal person may "own" a specific Dreaming, such as Kangaroo Dreaming, Shark Dreaming, Honey Ant Dreaming, Badger Dreaming, or any combination of Dreamings pertinent to their country. This is because in the Dreaming an individual's entire ancestry exists as one, culminating in the idea that all worldly knowledge is accumulated through one's ancestors. Many Aboriginal Australians also refer to the world-creation time as "Dreamtime". The Dreaming laid down the patterns of life for the Aboriginal people.
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Wati kutjara is one of the most important Dreamings around Balgo; in Kukatja narratives, the Wati kutjara are often likened to the wind, whose form they adopt when in danger. The men's first action is to sing about their names in order to establish their own identity.Cowan, J. (1994) Wirrimanu - Aboriginal Art from the Balgo Hills, Gordon & Breach Arts International, p.32. Then they decide to travel about, and eventually decide to head south-east in order to enlighten the people there who do not possess the rituals known to the Dreaming heroes.
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Visible are various brown hills scattered across the eastern half of the lake and east-west-oriented sand ridges south of the lake. Known as Wilkinkarra to the local Indigenous population, Lake Mackay features prominently in the Aboriginal Dreaming narratives of the Western Desert. The main mythological accounts of its origins can be clustered into three distinct themes, all of which contain references to a fierce bushfire that devastated the land and formed the lake.Graham, L.D. (2003) The Creation of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) in Pintupi/Kukatja Dreamings, Australian Aboriginal Studies 2003/1, 30-38.
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Mona Rockman was probably one of a number of artists who first learned painting through a course run in 1986 at Lajamanu by an adult education officer, John Quinn, associated with the local Technical and Further Education unit. The course, initially attended only by men, eventually enrolled over a hundred community members. Others who began their careers through that course include Louisa Napaljarri, as well as Mona's sister Peggy Rockman. Western Desert artists such as Mona will frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights.
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A complex concept, Tjukurrpa refers to the spiritual knowledge of the landscape and custodianship of it; it also refers to laws, rules or stories that people must maintain and re-produce in their communities. Daisy Jugadai portrayed in her art both those for which she had personal responsibility, and those of her late husband and late father. These included honey ant, spinifex and emu dreamings; geographical locations that were the settings for these paintings included Muruntji waterhole and Talabarrdi, and other locations around Kungkayunti, where her family had lived for many years.
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A great deal of contemporary Aboriginal art has an astronomical theme, reflecting the astronomical elements of the artists' cultures. Prominent examples are Gulumbu Yunupingu, Bill Yidumduma Harney, and Nami Maymuru, all of whom have won awards or been finalists in the Telstra Indigenous Art Awards. In 2009 an exhibition of Indigenous Astronomical Art from WA, named Ilgarijiri was launched at AIATSIS in Canberra in conjunction with a Symposium on Aboriginal Astronomy.'Things belonging to the sky': a symposium on Indigenous Astronomy Other contemporary painters include the daughters of the late Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, who have the seven sisters as one of their Dreamings.
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Horn won the IRN Fanny Ann Eddy Poetry Prize in 2009 for her poem "They have killed Sizakele" and the Sojourner Poetry Prize judged by June Jordan in 2001 for her poem "Dis U.N: For Rwanda". Her prose-poem "Dreamings" was profiled in the International Museum of Women's online exhibition Imagining Ourselves. She is also the author of a collection, Speaking in Tongues (Mouthmark, 2006), which is included in the collected Mouthmark Book of Poetry alongside work by Warsan Shire, Malika Booker, and Inua Ellams. Her work has been featured on the Pan- African poetry platform Badilisha Poetry Radio.
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John Kundereri Moriarty AM (born c. 1938Moriarty's date of birth was recorded officially as 1 April 1938 but this is not believed to be accurate) is an Indigenous Australian artist, government advisor and former football (soccer) player. He is most famous, as founder of the Balarinji Design Studio, for painting two Qantas jets with Aboriginal motifs. Today a full member of the Yanyuwa people of his birthplace, and belonging ceremonially to the rainbow snake and kangaroo Dreamings, Moriarty has held senior and executive positions in the Department of Aboriginal Affairs at both federal and state government levels.
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At the many sites that make up these songlines, groups of Tingari people held ceremonies, experienced adversity and had adventures, in the course of which they either created or became the physical features of the sites involved. In mythological terms, Tingari exploits often add to or modify features at pre-existing sites, or revive and extend more ancient local Dreamings (Kimber 2000:273). The oral narratives that describe these adventures stretch to thousands of verses, and provide countless topographical details that would assist nomadic bands to navigate and survive in the arid landscape (Petri 1970:263).
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Stencil art at Carnarvon Gorge, which may be memorials, signs from or appeals to totemic ancestors or records of Dreaming stories. Dreaming (also the Dreaming, the Dreamings and the Dreamtime) is a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal beliefs. It was originally used by Francis Gillen, quickly adopted by his colleague Baldwin Spencer and thereafter popularised by A. P. Elkin, who, however, later revised his views. The Dreaming is used to represent Aboriginal concepts of Everywhen during which the land was inhabited by ancestral figures, often of heroic proportions or with supernatural abilities.
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One of the first women of Yuendumu to work with acrylic paints, Brown painted for Warlukurlangu Artists in Yuendumu, which she continued to do when living at Mangurrurpa. In October 1985, she was amongst the artists whose works were exhibited at the first exhibition of paintings from Yuendumu, at the Araluen Centre for Arts and Entertainment in Alice Springs. Western Desert artists such as Brown will frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights. Her works included paintings of Witi Jukurrpa, or ceremonial pole dreaming, Ngarlkirdi, or witchetty grub, Yiwarra, or Milky Way, bandicoot and Two Women.
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Peggy Rockman was one of a number of artists who first learned painting through a course run in 1986 at Lajamanu by an adult education officer, John Quinn, associated with the local Technical and Further Education unit. The course, initially attended only by men, eventually enrolled over a hundred community members. Others who began their painting careers through that course include Mona Rockman Napaljarri and Louisa Napaljarri. Western Desert artists such as Peggy Rockman will frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights, which in Peggy's case include Ngatijirri (budgerigar), Warna (snake), Laju and Ngarlu.
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In 1996, Takariya was represented in the Papunya Women group exhibition at Utopia Art Gallery in Sydney, and in 1997 was included in the Bulada exhibition at the Art Gallery of New Wales. She has painted for the Warlayirti Artists at Balgo, as well as for Papunya Tula, the premier Indigenous art company set up by Indigenous artists in the 1970s. Her work was included in an exhibition of Papunya Tula paintings at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in 2007. Western Desert artists such as Biddy will frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights.
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After encouraging the children to record their sand patterns in paint, he went on to encourage the adult men of the community to paint their Honey Ant Dreaming on the school wall, preserving their traditional Dreamings, or Tjukurpa, and stories in paint. Eric Michaels comments on this in his essay Bad Aboriginal Art: "... [directed by Bardon, the elders] began to interact with certain issues in 1960s and 70s international painting, especially the extreme schematisation of New York minimalism." Bardon, however, claimed non-intervention. Michaels went further to say that arguably the choice of materials (acrylic paint) was also an influencing factor.
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The Kluge-Ruhe Collection receives its namesake from the two American men who collected the majority of the artwork, media mogul John W. Kluge and English Professor Edward L. Ruhe. Kluge experienced a powerful visual attraction to Aboriginal art in 1988 when he attended the exhibition, Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia, at the Asia Society Galleries in New York City. Beginning in 1989, he visited Australia on several occasions, hired curatorial advisers and commissioned or collected more than 600 artworks. In 1993, Kluge seized the opportunity to acquire the collection of the late Edward L. Ruhe (1923-1989).
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Peggy Rockman, together with linguist Lee Cataldi, wrote Yimikirli: Warlpiri Dreamings and Histories, a work sponsored by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, and published in 1994. It is a 200-page collection of oral texts, collected in Warlpiri and provided with English translations, for which Peggy Rockman was a source as well as editor. A senior dancer amongst her people, Peggy Rockman helped choose the site for, and participated in, a major ceremony for a 1993 Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary film, Milli Milli. The ceremony, called Wati Kutjarra (Two men) Dreaming, was performed with others including fellow artist Susie Bootja Bootja Napaltjarri.
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Warlugulong (1977) is an acrylic on canvas painting by Indigenous Australian artist Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. Owned for many years by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the work was sold by art dealer Hank Ebes on 24 July 2007, setting a record price for a contemporary Indigenous Australian art work bought at auction when it was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for A$2.4 million. The painting illustrates the story of an ancestral being called Lungkata, together with eight other dreamings associated with localities about which Clifford Possum had traditional knowledge. It exemplifies a distinctive painting style developed by Papunya Tula artists in the 1970s, and blends representation of landscape with ceremonial iconography.
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Created in synthetic polymer paint on canvas, and a substantial in size, the work's title is taken from a location roughly "northwest of Alice Springs associated with a powerful desert dreaming". Clifford Possum would often collaborate with other artists, particularly his brother Tim Leura, and the brothers together created the 1976 work of the same name. Art critic Benjamin Genocchio has referred to the 1977 work as also being by the brothers; however, the National Gallery of Australia credits it solely to Clifford Possum. Like the other four works of the period that are symbolic maps of the artist's country, the painting is accompanied by annotated diagrams of the images and notes that explain the dreamings that they include.
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Detail showing the skeleton of one of Lungkata's sons, against a background representing smoke and ashes While the painting has been described as showing the story of an ancestral being called Lungkata starting the first bushfire, it portrays elements of nine distinct dreamings, of which Lungkata's tale is the central motif. Lungkata was the Bluetongue Lizard Man, an ancestral figure responsible for creating bushfire. The painting portrays the results of a fire, caused by Lungkata to punish his two sons who did not share with their father the kangaroo they had caught. The sons' skeletons are on the right hand side of the image, shown against a background representing smoke and ashes.
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Throughout the work, Upambura the Possum Man's footsteps follow the wandering lines that give the painting its overall structure. This work excludes elements of several dreamings associated with country further south, which had been included in the painting created by Clifford Possum and his brother a year earlier. The omission led scholar Vivien Johnson to conclude that Warlugulong (1977) portrays a narrower geographic area than the preceding work. The artist also modified some of the iconography, and limited the explanations of the painting, omitting secret-sacred dimensions of the stories to avoid offending other Indigenous men, and in recognition that most of the audience for the work would be uninitiated non-Indigenous people.
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The Religious System of the Amazulu still has a direct impact today. An example would be an academic journal called Dreaming in the Contact Zone: Zulu Dreams, Visions and Religion in the Nineteenth-Century in Africa created by David Chidester. In his writing he stated that the British colonialism had obstructed the religious elements of Africa and other aspects of the indigenous patterns. The Africans were unable to dream under the conditions of colonialism because they believed that “power speaks to power” which they indicated that the “European colonial administrator did all of their dreamings”. Chidester stated that Callaway called the book, The Religious System of the Amazulu, as “subjective apparition or brain sensation of African dream life”.
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Johnson's analysis of the painting emphasises the relationship between the representation of geographical sites in the Yuendumu region and the dreaming stories associated with those sites. She concludes that there is "a topographic rationale for the order in which the Dreamings appear from left to right (that is, east to west) across the painting [as well as for] the transverse Dreaming trails". However, beyond this general principle, she argues that the layout of symbols and images is influenced by the desire to present a symmetrical work. There is greater visual symmetry in this painting than in its 1976 predecessor; symmetry is a strong influence in the works of many of the early Western Desert artists, including Clifford Possum, Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri and Kaapa Tjampitjinpa.
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It is suspected that Mungurrawuy was quite young when he last interacted with Makassans, since the Australian Government banned other countries from using the resources found on Australian coasts in 1906. However, he did remember meeting Makassan people and for Berndt’s crayon drawing commission, he drew his famous Port of Macassar. In the late 1960s, Mungurrawuy was commissioned to produce a series of painting on masonite board to commemorate events involving the ELDO tracking station at Gurlkurla by Geoff Woods, who was employed as the base manager at a nearby weapons research centre. One work of these works, Space Tracking Station (1967), was subsequently acquired by the South Australian Museum and included in the exhibition Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia at the Asia Society Galleries in New York City in 1988.
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He was tutored in rarrk, a traditional painting technique using fine cross-hatching and infill, in the 1970s by his uncle Peter Marralwanga and elder brother Jimmy Njiminjuma and began producing small paintings on bark. During the 1980s he began producing larger and more complex works, and in 1988 won a Rothmans Foundation Award. During the 1990s his work was included in major exhibitions dealing with Aboriginal Australian art, such as Dreamings in New York (1988), Crossroads in Japan (1992), Aratjara: Art of the first Australians in Germany and the UK (1993–1994), and In the heart of Arnhem Land in France (2001). In 2000, Mawurndjul's work was amongst that of eight individual and collaborative groups of Indigenous Australian artists shown in the prestigious Nicholas Hall at the Hermitage Museum in Russia.
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There are many words and expressions in the Gurindji language that have a complex meaning and usage that cannot be replicated in English. An example found in National Indigenous Languages Survey Report is the Gurindji word for 'law' (yumi) "encompasses not just what we might call civil and criminal 'law' but the ways of behavior and social control with regard to kin and the land that was bestowed by the ancestors and Dreamings" Another difference in Gurindji and English vocabularies is the words used to indicate left and right. As Felicity Meakins discovered, "Gurindji doesn't have terms for left and right, but has 24 different words each for north, south, east and west" Lastly, kinship systems, or the varying words to describe familial relationships are much different than in English. There are many more words than simply 'father', 'brother' and 'sister' as Gurindji people have many fathers, brothers and sisters.
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Whereas the predominant Aboriginal style was based on the one developed with some assistance from art teacher Geoffrey Bardon at the Papunya community in 1971 of many similarly sized dots carefully lying next to each other in distinct patterns, Kngwarreye created her own original artistic style. This first style, in her paintings between 1989 and 1991, had many dots, sometimes lying on top of each other, of varying sizes and colours, as seen in Wild Potato Dreaming (1996). Initially Kngwarreye painted for CAAMA and the Holt family at Delmore Downs Station; by 1991 she was producing many works for the Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings in Melbourne as well as Fred Torres of Dacou located in Adelaide. These original paintings of different styles quickly went for high prices at auction, with a revenue for the Utopia group of painters of more than million in 1989/90.
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Daniels began painting in the 1980s with the anthropologist Francoise Dussart. She began by painting ancestral designs on acrylic canvas in a style that has become known as Aboriginal ‘dot’ painting. Her paintings adhere very strongly to traditional templates for painting, but creativity can be seen in the handling of the painting, arrangement of the motifs and size and placement of the dots. Her work is made most distinguishable due to their bright colours and intricate patterns. Her works celebrate Australian Aboriginal Dreaming and culture and thoroughly invoked the Warlipiri concepts of ‘country’, ‘home’ and ‘camp’ in her work. She painted both her own and her father’s dreamings and states “it is our story - Aboriginal people’s story”. She was part of the South Australian Museum’s Yuendumu. In her mission to promote Warlpiri culture, Daniels helped found and subsequently chair the Warlukurlangu Artists Association and Art Centre , which continues to thrive as one of the longest running and most successful Aboriginal-owned art centres in Central Australia.
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It was during this period that he created the work Straightening spears at Ilyingaungau (1990), held by the Art Gallery of South Australia. This painting was described by both art expert Vivian Johnson and critic Susan McCulloch-Uehlin as his masterpiece, and by obituarist Rebecca Hossack as his most famous work: "a series of shimmering horizontal lines representing spears being heated and straightened over a fire by Tolson's ancestors". This and other similar works were described by art critic Susan McCulloch-Uehlin as representing not only the preparation of the spears, but also elements of Dreamings concerning fights between ancestral figures at a rock bluff west of Alice Springs. In 1999, controversy erupted when Tolson signed a statutory declaration in which he stated that, in return for payments, he had put his signature on paintings that had been created by some of his female relatives, but then, shortly afterwards, signed a contradictory declaration.
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