Doris Bush Nungarrayi

Nyunmanu is a Dingo Dreaming site just to the south east of the remote Aboriginal community of Kintore in the Northern Territory. Most of the dingoes and their pups from this place rose up into the sky and became stars. However, the ancestral mother Dingo and her pup had gone out hunting and were too tired to rise up, so they turned into a large rock that marks the place of this sacred Dreaming. It is said that if you sleep in this place you will dream of the ancestral dingo puppies. The story goes that if you remove one of the gleaming stones found at Nyunmanu, the puppies will haunt your dreams until you return it to the place where it belongs. The custodians of this Tjukurrpa are Nungarrayi, Tjungarrayi, Napaltjarri and Tjapaltjarri women and men. The circles in this story often represent important waterholes. The roundels extending from the circles are the designs the women paint

Nyunmanu is a Dingo Dreaming site just to the south east of the remote Aboriginal community of Kintore in the Northern Territory. Most of the dingoes and their pups from this place rose up into the sky and became stars. However, the ancestral mother Dingo and her pup had gone out hunting and were too tired to rise up, so they turned into a large rock that marks the place of this sacred Dreaming. It is said that if you sleep in this place you will dream of the ancestral dingo puppies. The story goes that if you remove one of the gleaming stones found at Nyunmanu, the puppies will haunt your dreams until you return it to the place where it belongs. The custodians of this Tjukurrpa are Nungarrayi, Tjungarrayi, Napaltjarri and Tjapaltjarri women and men. The circles in this story often represent important waterholes. The roundels extending from the circles are the designs the women paint on their breasts during ceremony.

Doris has painted a plentiful memory from her past in the early days when she was learning from her mother out at Wilura and Nyumannu. Nyunmanu is a Dreaming site just to the south east of the remote Aboriginal community of Kintore in the Northern Territory Doris talks of her and her mother handling different types of Mangarri (food). As Doris talks about these memories she enacts the handling and eating of Mai (food) and drinking Kapi (water). Doris speaks of breaking open Pura (big wild bush tomatos) to eat the flesh and collecting and eating of ilyuru (a sweet natural cotton-candy-like bush food). Doris talks of different tools to do this like wana (digging sticks) and speaks of other parts of the fruitful landscape such as witya (trees). Now, when Doris sits in Papunya to paint she sits under a large watiya (tree). She remembers that this same type of watiya was at Nyumannu too, and her and her mother would sit under it. Doris recalls the whole family sitting around nikiti way (without clothes in the old days) and without any other Western tools. Doris explains “Billy can wiya! Blanket wiya! Just running around!”.