There’s been a lot of coming and going in this place over the past few weeks so now’s the time to sum it up and let you know what’s been happening.
Trevor and I have been down in the South Australian community of Mimili for the past week, running a school holiday program of workshops through NPY Women’s Council. The community was particularly interested in theatre workshops which would build on previous activities and from the first day we were impressed by the willingness and talent among the young people coming. We were helped enormously by Charmaine Stewart who rounded up young people and encouraged everyone to participate. Charmaine also helped with translating the tasks of theatre games and activities which made it possible to move beyond the basics and meant that young people were clear about what was being asked of them, making them more willing to participate. We had young people coming from about 6 to 16 with a number of adults and parents dropping in to see what we were doing over the week. We would have loved to stay longer in Mimili and thank the community for making us feel so welcome.
Sampi and Sadie. Sadie worked with Lucy from Deadly Mob last week to make this great photo collage in Photoshop.
Our bush trip followed hot on the trail of Beth and musician/artsworker Vincent Lamberti’s trip to Pukatja community over Easter. Although apparently challenging to get everyone at the same place at the same time, the two reported to have had a series of focused practises of the Ngapartji-Ngapartji songs and there are now a large group of women who are either very familiar or fairly familiar with the material, including Amanyi Haggie, Imuna Kenta, Imiyari Adamson, Renita Stanley, Nungalka Stanley, Rhoda Tjitayi, Pantjiti Lewis, Alison Carroll, Makinti Minutjukur, Josephine Mick, Mary Pan, Malpiya Dave, Unurupa Kulyuru, Jennifer Ingkatji, Nyunmiti Ingkatji, Janet Inyika, Muyuru O’Toole, Mantatjara Wilson and Alison Munti. Mervin Adamson and another young man, Chriswell, also jammed with the singers and played songs from the show.
Beth also attended the ‘opening’ ceremony in Amata for our friend and colleague who passed away and some of the women sang a few songs from the show at this occasion. Beth and Pantjiti also had a ‘meeting’ at the bush camp in Amata where they spoke briefly about what the show was about and about how special it was on a national level.
Also a filmmaker, Vincent worked with a group of young women to produce a short film of their design and making in Pukatja and followed this up with teaching editing with some of the girls. Beth also spent time teaching a young man, Ngunytjima, to play guitar as he’d been asking.
Back on the homefront Batesy’s been working with Pantjiti and Jennifer on the video we are making about the whole of the Ngapartji Ngapartji project. Together they brainstormed and scripted what Pantjiti would say and recorded the next day. Pantjiti had a lot to say about what it was like to be on stage and teaching Pitjantjatjara to lots of ‘whitefellas’. This is a little bit of what the ‘minyma kutjara’ said. You might like to see how much you can read before you look at Lorna’s translations (which will become subtitles on the video)!
‘Nyaa Ngapartji Ngapartji? Ngapartji Ngapartji alatji nganana palyani.
Nganana nintini tjukurpa Pitjantjatjara munu inma kulu nintiringkuntjaku.’
‘Nyaaku? Alatji tjitji tjuta nintiringuktjaku munu anangu tjuta
nintinrinkuntjaku munu piranpa tjuta kulu nintiringkuntjaku nganana
nintini nganampa tjukurpaku nintiringkuntjaku munula tjungu Ngapartji
Ngapartji warkaringanyi tjungu anangu tjuta munu piranpa tjuta kulu,
malparara tjungu.’
What is this? This is what it is about. We are teaching and sharing our language, songs and dances.
Why? This is how our children and others have learnt and white people as well and this is a good way of learning, through sharing within Ngapartji Ngapartji and working together as friends and also helping each other to build on other skills and to gain confidence.
Yesterday it was Trevor and Sadie’s turn so we went down to the Telegraph Station to do some filming for the video. Sadie talked a lot about her enjoyment of touring with the show and managed to move away from the script in the end and speak directly to the camera, which was great.
Meanwhile Tom’s been reformatting the presentation of information on the website and language sheets and developing a new structure for the flow of lessons on the site. Hopefully you’ve checked out the new lesson which went up last week, which was made from the footage made with young people during our time in Docker River in January. We’ve got more lessons in production which look at how to make slightly more complex sentences, and other interesting nuances of Pitjantjatjara. For now, we hope you enjoy learning Pitjantjatjara verbs in a waterhole in ‘Tjarpanyi’!
Last week we had Lucy from Deadly Mob in again doing photoshop workshops which enabled Sadie to transpose the favourite Perth photo to Alice. We expect she's started something here and look forward to the series of the West Coast Eagles in various locations in Alice!
This week there was a convergence of Ngapartji Ngapartji folk in Alice with designers Karl and Tessa back in town working on Shifting Ground (‘21 days of Art and Performance in Alice’) as well as Jess here for the first time also working on this program. With Trevor here for a few days our weekly meeting doubled in size and it felt good to get input from the many spokes of the wheel that is Ngapartji Ngapartji.
Dani
