Midawarr | Harvest: The Art of Mrs Wirrpanda and John Wolseley

Warning: Mrs Wirrpanda is mentioned by her first name in the audio track. References in text have been changed.

MRS WIRRPANDA: My relative Birrkitji number one taught me. He was a law man and a keeper of knowledge, and he taught me a painting called, yalata (the home of the brolgas).

In a place called Barrŋgul Dhuruputjpi. He taught me däŋgultji (brolga) painting.

I was working on that painting ... I also painted a Yirritja painting, my mother's painting called birrkuda (wild honey), while painting it, it made me understand I could see it through my own eyes, the honey painting, I was painting, I said to myself 'I'm going to stop painting this ... and I'm going to look for a different painting about food' that's what I said a bush food that I gathered and ate.

JOHN WOLSELEY: Mrs Wirrpanda, the great Yolŋu artist, has painted thirty to forty paintings of the edible plants of her clan area. Each one of these paintings is a great work of art and each one of them is different and gets the particular quality of the particular food plant. Now she did this, because she said her people are dying because of eating the wrong food.

MRS WIRRPANDA: Wash it gently, not hard. Keep cleaning it, keep cleaning it. This one, but the root is salty, like this one, yes that one too.

JOHN WOLSELEY: What's that one there?

MRS WIRRPANDA: Buwakul.

JOHN WOLSELEY: Ah wonderful, my goodness me. Oh look!

MRS WIRRPANDA: That's yukuwa.

JOHN WOLSELEY: Look at that, yukuwa. Yukuwa.

MRS WIRRPANDA: This is the new shoots of the yam growing called ganguri.

Old people ate this food and they replanted the yam by pushing the soil back and then I learnt to replant the yam by pushing the soil back, at Yilpara I started doing this.

JOHN WOLSELEY: She decided to paint all these ... plants which don't usually figure in the traditional paintings about the Yolŋu beliefs and stories. It's almost as if she was doing an equivalent of a flora of the European idea of the flora of her country.

MRS WIRRPANDA: We established Yilpara homeland. We lived with and gathered manmunga (ganguri yam). We stayed full with this yam and nindan (another yam). We established Yilpara with only small amounts of white man's food.

This is the food our old people used to eat. We are painting a food called bulwutja. This is a corm we can eat called bulwutja. This is the corm's leaves and this is its water. Its pattern. The food grows in the water.

JOHN WOLSELEY: So this one is ... flowing in the water.

MRS WIRRPANDA: This is the pattern of the water. I don't know what kind of water you're drawing brother.

And this bulwutja is from Yalmakany and I painted this bulwutja. Bush food, but forgotten now. Our old people lived and survived on this food and they never got sick, our old people, and then the foreign food came, and brought sickness for the Yolŋu people. The Yolŋu people got sick with the foreign food. From white people. With our food our old people never got sick. They were strong. The food is bulwutja, it's ours grandchild for Djapu, our family, our spirit people. Here at Rarrirarri, where we are, where that food is located in our area at Garaŋarri.

JOHN WOLSELEY: It's one of the most powerful landscapes in the world within its culture and it is the landscape which has been cherished and lived in for thousands of years by the Yolŋu people who have got powerful stories about how the landscape was made.

MRS WIRRPANDA: Over this is the big swampy plain, it goes from here to a Yirritja place Until ... further on, further on to the place called Bomatjpi that's where the swampy plain ends. This is where we ate guwita (witchetty grubs) a long time ago a mob of us. Including Woŋgu ate them too.

Grandfather, old man Woŋgu Mutjaŋga's father. From räkay (water chestnuts) the grubs.

The name Läŋgurrk (witchetty grub) what this man is named after ... I gave the name Läŋgurrk, to this man.