The Paintings
The Spinifex Arts Project grew out of the Spinifex Native Title Claim documentation process through which the traditional owners of desert country in the Great Victoria Desert of Western Australia sought and secured formal title over tribal lands. The negotiated Spinifex claim process led to an historic land settlement in 2000, now seen as a watershed case of contemporary Indigenous negotiations.

The land claim process precipitated a remarkable series of bush trips to long unvisited sacred sites. The opportunity to record and present sites, kinship and deep, continuous lines of ancestral knowledge was grasped with great enthusiasm by people who had never painted before but who had much to paint about. With a good deal of singing, laughing, and recounting of stories the Spinifex People began to record ownership of Country as paintings in order to show outsiders the living body of knowledge held by the Spinifex People.

The Spinifex paintings are unique moments of endless ties between the land, the people and the culture. Artists are painting country in a way that shows both a deep knowledge of but also heavy responsibility for the country, the land and each other. Looking through the lens of these paintings offers a unique glimpse of these powerful and beautiful desert connections.

The Land
The Spinifex Native Title Determination Area covers some 55,000 square kilometres of pristine Sandhill and Mulga Plains country in the far east of Western Australia. The land area is diverse, with nullarbor plains to the south, spinifex bush and sandhill country to the north and a surprising variety of land forms incorporating lakes, rocky outcrops, hills, valleys and open plains.

Although one of the world’s richest locations for lizard diversity, the area also features a range of desert marsupials and birdlife, as well as a truly amazing array of desert plants and insects. Many plant and animal species display unique and often wonderful adaptations to a demanding and unforgiving desert environment.

Rainfall in Spinifex Country is a mere 175-230mm per year, falling mainly in summer storms. These storms quickly sweep across the plains, bringing heavy rain and thunderstorms, running precious water into easily missed rockholes and deep soaks. The long dry spells feature high temperatures (often above 45ºC for weeks on end), baking sun and hot wind – yet night chills may fall below 0ºC.

This intense desert environment is rich for those who hold an intimate knowledge of its hidden resources and powers. Of all resources, water is the most precious: rockholes, soaks, wells, certain trees, plants and even animals can be a supply to sustain life. Finding food and water for families in such a challenging environment requires a highly developed, subtle and intimate knowledge of the country and the country’s complex seasons and cycles.

The People
The Spinifex people say, ‘Kapi ninti’ (‘We know the water’), where such knowledge of water is knowledge of life. As the Spinifex Native Title paintings document, who else could make such a claim?

The Spinifex People are a small tribal group who lived across a huge area of desert lands moving with the seasons in time with the resources of the land. Most of the Spinifex People were brought in, or came in, from tribal areas to Cundeelee Mission between the late 1940’s and 50’s, and the 1960’s due to the joint British and Australian Maralinga Atomic Testing program in the eastern region of the Spinifex area. Not all families left during this period – an extended family group was contacted for the first time in 1987.

Generally, desert dwellers such as the Spinifex People ranged across desert lands in extended family groups depending on each other and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the land to secure water and food sources. A detailed knowledge about the grand cycle of the seasons and the minute variations of life were crucial for survival and the continuation of the tribe. Gatherings of people for ceremony, funerals, initiations and kinship obligations or extensions (marriage negotiations) required a delicate and subtle sense of the land’s resources. The desert does not yield to people and does not forgive error of judgement, nor a failure to read signs. Over many, many years the Spinifex People have learnt the Law and lore of the land. They have thrived, and continue to pass on this knowledge.

In desert life, the newborn is related forever not only to an extended family group but to the particular place in the country where the actual birth took place. Through this place one becomes part of a kinship web that includes perpetual relations with others who are also related through birth to the land. With relations come responsibility and obligation – especially to people and place throughout the desert region. Ownership of land is thus always and inevitably associated with family, kinship and country. Knowledge of country is the paramount component of successful desert life.

The Culture
An intricate network of multi-faceted stories of magical beings that created, travelled across, and are contained within Country define both the land and the people’s relations to it. Generally the actions, relationships and residual powers left by these magical beings formed and still sustain places and sites in the country joining each place into a dense and active web. The paths (iwarra) of these wonderful metaphysical beings crisscross a vast country, intersecting, joining up or sometimes nearing but not quite ‘meeting’ each other. The stories, songlines and legacy of these heroic beings have given form and nature to the country and in doing so has given deep meaning to life in the desert.

The Seven Sisters (Minyma Tjuta), the Two Men (Wati Kutjara), the Emu (Kalaya), the Kangaroo Man (Kurlpilpa), the Evil Spirit (Mamu) – these rich stories and many others, some too dangerous to speak of or even name, some more public and able to be shown, are the interconnected fabric of physical and spiritual life in Spinifex country. Spinifex paintings detail the paths, actions and deep meanings of these stories as they pass across country, travel through places and provide relations between people.

The lore and Laws of these stories provide the rules and framework for successful and ongoing desert life. They have worked for many thousands of years and have provided a powerful backdrop for reciprocal responsibilities between people and land. The basic rule is simple: Do the right thing (by the country, family and community) and the world is as it should be.