Maningrida Arts & Culture is one of Australia’s largest Aboriginal artist’s co-operatives. It concentrates on traditional and contemporary arts, including bark paintings, wooden sculpture, fibre craft, prints and items of material culture.

Both traditional and non-traditional works from Maningrida have a reputation for quality, innovation, vibrancy and diversity. In per capita terms, it is perhaps the most multilingual community in the world; the linguistic variety is echoed by the cultural diversity in the area, evidenced by the number of different religious ceremonies and the multitude of artistic forms in design, music and dance. Given its reputation, interest in and demand for work from Maningrida is high. Artworks are represented in major galleries, museums and other public institutions, nationally and internationally.

The town of Maningrida lies on the estuary of the Liverpool River, on the coast of Arnhem Land. The Kunibídji people are the traditional landowners of this country. The name Maningrida is an Anglicised version of the Kunibídji name Manayingkarírra, which comes from the phrase Mane djang karirra, meaning ‘the place where the dreaming changed shape’.

The township of Maningrida dates back to just after the second world war when Welfare Branch patrol officers Sid Kyle-Little and Jack Doolan were sent by the Government to set up a ration-cum-trade post there. This was converted by Dave and Ingrid Drysdale into a permanent Welfare Department settlement from 1957, partly to quell the post-war migration of Aboriginal people from the Blyth and Liverpool Rivers regions into Darwin. Patrols went out to spread the word and encourage people to move into the settlement. Within a few years many people from the surrounding area lived in Maningrida. However there were exceptions, the most notable being Rembarrnga/Dangbon leader Mandarrk and his family who stayed ‘out bush’ at Duman.gerre and Yayminyi and maintained their traditional way of life.

In the early 1970s, the Woodward Land Rights Commission, the election of the Whitlam government and the creation of the Land Rights Flag in 1971 raised the profile of land rights as an important issue. With this growing understanding of the political dimensions of land tenure, and with the changes to government policy, many people started moving back to their homelands, away from the concentrated population at Maningrida. The
Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation was established in its original form in the early 1970s as a support agency for those Aboriginal people who chose to live on their clan estates rather than in the settlement.

The north central Arnhem Land area now serviced by Maningrida extends from Marrkolidjban in Eastern Kunwinjku country to the west, to Berriba in Dangbon country in the south, and over as far as Yinangarnduwa, or Cape Stewart, in the east.

Amongst the complex social networks of kinship and ceremonial linkage in Aboriginal society, language is one of the most important markers of social identity. Aboriginal people often identify the social groupings that they belong to in terms of the language that they speak. Aboriginal cultures are unique, and every Aboriginal language encompasses a world of knowledge that is also unique to that culture. The intense multilingualism of the Maningrida area community is testimony to the strength and resilience of Aboriginal ceremonial life, environmental knowledge and social organisation within the wider Australian community.