Nangalaku May Doonday, Mulan, 2008:
Long time ago in the Dreamtime, they used to live, old people, in the lake.
Before white settlement, the Paruku (Lake Gregory) and Tjurabalan (Sturt Creek) regions were centres of activity both for ancestral beings and for river, lake and desert people.
The Paruku lake system lies at the end of the Tjurapalan Jukurrpa, a major Dreaming track that binds together many language groups over a wide area. The surrounding fertile country provided an abundant source of plant and animal life for local groups and desert people in times of drought. These groups met regularly at Paruku and Tjurabalan to trade and perform ceremonies.
Exotic trade items such as jakuli, or pearl shells, also passed through Paruku and Tjurabalan to destinations as far south as the Great Australian Bight and as far east as Queensland and New South Wales.
In the desert, both men and women used jakuli for ritual and decorative purposes. Their lustrous surfaces symbolised beauty and health, and recalled the brilliance of the ancestral beings as they emerged in the Dreamtime.
As the sacred objects coveted by the jila men, jakuli were also used in rainmaking ceremonies, their striking iridescence evoking water in its many manifestations.
Kiki and the pearl shell
Yanpiyarti Ned Cox and Putuparri Tom Lawford, Ngumpan, 2008:
From the Dreamtime, [the ancestral hero] Kiki was coming from the sky, looking for a place to live. He came down near Paruku and went down in the water.
Kiki felt hungry after travelling a long way and made plants and put them round everywhere. He made the plants grow. Plants you can grind to make flour, seeds, little grapes, some healing stuff too. He put all them frogs that people eat, bandicoots, blue tongue lizards, animals that used to live out there. What we still eat today is from that old fella.
Kiki had a white stone in the Dreamtime and he tried to hide it in that big lake. But it kept on floating up. Bandicoot man came along and found that thing floating in the water. He stole it and threw it in the ocean near Broome. From there it turned into a pearl shell. That’s why Broome is rich with pearl shells. It [the pearl shell] started from Paruku. It didn’t want to hide.
![A tin and hair string pendant and necklace. The tin pendant is a flat rounded shape with a hole at the top. A fabric strip is threaded through the hole and has twisted hair string attached. The tin pendant is painted on one side and shows signs of oxidisation on both sides. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0003/714612/2.jpg)
Engraved jakuli collected by Alfred Canning’s party
![A pearlshell and hair string pendant with necklet. The pearlshell is tear drop shaped with a hole at the narrow end and has a painted geometric design carved on one side. The verso contains a handwritten annotation reading, 'A 17045 / Canning Stock route / W.A. / 9791'. Two letters have been carved onto the verso reading, 'KE'. A natural fibre string is threaded through the hole and has twisted hair string attached as a necklet. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0004/714613/3.jpg)
Tin pendant collected by Alfred Canning’s party
![An six panel dot and line painting on canvas. The granulated background is a red/brown colour, overpainted with mustard and black geometric designs bordered with white dots. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0005/714614/4.jpg)
Majakarr by Paruku George Wallaby
![A long rectangular dot painting on canvas showing a topographical map of a region with a lake or river system which starts at the lower right side and moves up the centre to the top. There is a red wavy line and pink-brown lines like tracks or roads on the painting. The sections in the painting are dotted with different colour combinations including lime green and green, pink and green, beige and black, yellow and orange, blue, yellow and orange, black, grey and brown, pink and purple and others. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0006/714615/5.jpg)
Paruku by Paruku Artists
![A purple toned dot painting on brown linen with wavy vertical lines of purple-lavender dots interspersed with rows of olive green dots on a blue background. The lines of darker purple dots have smaller black dots outlining each of purple dots. Towards the bottom of the painting there is a scattering of pale yellow dots, and towards the top of the painting there are a few dark pink dots. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0007/714616/6.jpg)
Mungily by Veronica Lulu
![A brown linen square canvas covered with multilayered small dots in gold, lemon, red, orange, brown and green on a black background. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0008/714617/7.jpg)
Mungily by Veronica Lulu
![A painting on brown linen with a square yellow background and a blue-grey circle in the centre both covered with dots. The yellow area is filled with red, brown, gold and beige and the blue is filled with blue, purple, magenta, white, yellow and green. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0009/714618/8.jpg)
Parta by Veronica Lulu
![A square painting on brown linen with a yellow-brown background and a wavy blue U shape with two curved or wavy lines extending off it. The background is covered in beige, black, green, brown and violet dots. The blue shape is covered in blue dots with white and brown concentric circles at the edge and on some terminal points. Along the edges of the blue shape are rows of dots in red, white, orange and black. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0010/714619/9.jpg)
Paruku and Walmajarri People by Veronica Lulu
![A square painting on brown linen with a yellow orange background and a wavy blue line flanked by a row of black dots then a thick green line in the centre. The yellow background is covered in yellow, orange, maroon and black dots, and has beige and white footprints in groups on both sides of the central feature. There are also semicircles in black edged with white dots, with an oval, similarly decorated, inside each one, on both sides of the central feature. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0020/714620/10.jpg)
Mustering by Veronica Lulu
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