Held each September in Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Desert Mob showcases art that carries culture and argues for land rights. This year, head curator Hetti Perkins said on opening night that “Country isn’t just property, it’s family” and “the ancestors created it, they still reside in it. And from that continuity comes culture.”
Bonney’s winning work shows Titjambera, her grandmother’s Country. Her desciption reads: “My mother has been fighting for this land for 40 years, one of the longest standing land claims in the Northern Territory. We paint this Country to show our children, so they can keep painting the Country.”
A panel discusion to mark 50 years of the land rights movement featured Professor Marcia Langton. “You have to keep fighting,” she said. “Because they’ll (those who oppose Aboriginal land rights) never stop attacking the basic premise that Aboriginal people have rights.”
Another panel tackled buffel grass, an invasive species smothering bush foods and medicines. Alex Vaughan of the Arid Lands Environment Centre said “This is a justice question” and noted that Indigenous ranger groups often have to fix a problem they didn’t create. He added that “Artists are the best storytellers. They get us thinking in unique ways around what’s at risk.”
Artist Vanessa Inkamala recalled childhood Country: “We used to eat lots of bush tomato and mustard grass, it was growing everywhere. Now, buffel grass chokes it and we don’t see it.”
The festival included a cultural tour at Angkerle Atwatye (Standley Chasm) where guide David McCormack showed how to introduce oneself to ancestors by rubbing a rock and tossing it into water. “Now they know I’m here, I mean no harm, then they’ll know you’re with me, and you mean no harm,” he told a writer.
The art market drew long queues and offered paintings, ceramics, weaving and textiles. Money from sales flows back to artists and communities.