Language: Pintupi
Country: Kintore

The story Ningura tells was passed to her by her mother, Wyari Napaltjarri. It belongs to the Napaltjarri and Napurrula women It deals with a women’s birthing place (or, as Ningura sweetly refers to it as, “a borning place”), Wirrulnga rock hole. The large concentric circles she uses represent the rock hole itself, where the women give birth. The lines stretching out to either side of the rock hole are sand hills which run on either side of a creek. Where she uses semi-circular shapes she is showing old women that are looking after the woman having the baby. The shapes themselves are meant to show the women wearing nyimparra/hair-string skirts/bush belts. FYI, The latter westernized name I heard for a nyimparra came from Narrabri Nakamarra when she was explaining one of her pieces to me. Where we see two women sitting (with the normal arcs) – they are sitting either side of a nulla nulla that they have used to catch a goanna for tucker for everyone. They are sitting and cooking up that goanna. Ningura uses small open circles to represent what Ningura called, kumporopa. When I asked what the whitefella name for that was, the girls said bush cumquot. Interestingly, in the Pitlands, they refer to kampararpa often in their stories and translate it as bush tomato. The small coloured in circles they refer to as purra or bush apples. The larger circles Ningura also uses with a centre radiating outwards represent women’s hair twirled and plaited onto the top of the heads so as to carry food and water. This is known as a Mungwarri.