WANGKA WAKAUTJA

Name: WANGKA WAKAUTJA
Brand: National Library of Australia
Price: 44.75 AUD
Availability: PreOrder

The story of the Papunya Literature Production Centre

By: Vivien Johnson, Samantha Disbray, Charlotte Phillipus Napurrula

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Hardcover | 1 April 2026

At a Glance

Format
Hardcover

Dimensions(cm)
25.0 x 22.5

Hardcover

RRP $49.99

$44.75

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Available: 1st April 2026

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The Papunya Literature Production Centre was the centre of community life at Papunya in the 1980s. Fuelled by youthful energy and guided by the community's Elders among them pioneers of the Western Desert Art movement the centre produced more than 300 Pintupi-Luritja readers in a little over ten years. These books hold accounts of moments of first contact, Dreaming stories, life in the community, plants, animals and more. They were written and illustrated on Country and in language. After the program ended, these readers lay boxed in a padlocked dark room...until Dr Samantha Disbray unearthed the key.

The Papunya readers are full of humour, as in Kata yurilpa (Bald Head), which is about a man who uses special plants to grow his hair for a Midnight Oil concert and turns up looking like a long-haired rocker, only to find that the lead singer has a bald head. And they are full of drama, as in the many stories about the first plane ever sighted by the Papunya community, which some believed was a 'stumpy winged devil', or in Walypalalitju Lurtjurinytjaku (Me and a Whitefella Meeting), which is a unique document of one man's personal journey from first contact.

In Pintupi-Luritja, Wangka Wakautja means 'the story has been written'. Richly illustrated with photos of the artists, authors and students in action, as well as artwork from the readers themselves, this is the definitive story of a radical bilingual literature movement, powered by collective creativity and cultural pride.

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