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Desert encounter relived almost 50 years on

By Reko Rennie

14 July 2006 -IN 1957 Mitjili Napanangka, then a young Pintupi woman from the Western Desert, saw white people for the first time. Among them was Jeremy Long, a Northern Territory welfare officer, who took part in nine patrols of the Western Desert.

Yesterday Ms Napanangka, accompanied by her son-in-law and granddaughter, made the trip to Melbourne Museum for another historic meeting with Mr Long.

It is nearly 50 years since the pair last saw each other on the dusty plains of the Western Desert, when anthropologist and photographer David Thomson was leading an expedition into Ms Napanangka's country. Ms Napanangka — whose Pintupi group walked out of the Great Sandy Desert in 1984 — does not speak English so her granddaughter, Letitia Bartlett, 15, translated her feelings about life now. "I think it's good … life is good today, I'm sitting down living my life … life is good today," Ms Napanangka said.

Yesterday's reunion bought back many distant memories for Mr Long. "It's very nice to meet again with somebody I saw … when I was a junior member of a party that came out to see what was happening in that part of the desert," he said. "It all comes back to me — the excitement at the time — it was pretty amazing seeing these people who are living quite independently in the desert with the tools they could make themselves, eating every day the food they could gather," Mr Long said.

According to Ms Napanangka, there are some positives about living outside of her traditional way of life. "When I lived in the bush, the traditional marriage situation with co-wives, there used to be jealousy … one man, one woman is a good idea," she said with a smile.

According to the Pintupi elder, the biggest problem for Aboriginal people today is alcohol: "All the fighting and arguments from alcohol."

Ms Napanangka is in Melbourne for the opening of a new exhibition Colliding Worlds: First Contact in the Western Desert, 1932-1984.

Starting in the 1930s, Donald Thomson made several expeditions documenting Aboriginal life and culture in northern and central Australia, and the exhibition includes many photographs from his collection.

SourceThe Age

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