Rhubee Neale

Letty Scott Nupanunga,Anmatyerre, Central Australia (NT), Born Glen Hellen Station, NT 1953

I am an Aboriginal Artist of the Anmatyerre Aboriginal Nation – western desert artists in Central Australia of Irish and Aboriginal descent. I have sold one of my artworks for AUD$10,000 to the Australian Museum at Canberra. I –am one of the traditional owners at Garden Bore, via Yeulumu Anmatyerre Aboriginal community.

I have fought for twenty years to stop deaths in custody of Aboriginal people, and for justice for my own husband, who was found hanging in a Darwin Prison cell while on remand for alleged swearing after having a beer in a Darwin Hotel after work. I have addressed the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations at Geneva in Switzerland speaking under the banner of the Native Americans who gave me my speaking rights in Geneva. I also addressed the United Nations Press Club at the United Nations headquarters in New York, sponsored by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation at Geneva Switzerland.

I have also exposed art fraud by Sakshi, an Indian from Calcutta who claimed to be from the Anmatyerre Tribe. Sakshi changed his name by deed poll and was passing himself of to be an Anmatyerre Artist – selling his designs at Australia Post outlets and being paid a quarter of a million dollars to paint the Mary McKillop Place in North Sydney. I rang Sakshi and asked him why he was ripping off our Anmatyerre People into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, why he was fraudulently taking work from our people and fraudulently capitalising on the legacy of our Aboriginal Artists, our old people. After I contacted the ABC Sakshi skipped the country.. This story was aired by 7.30 report journalist Jeff Thomson, who received a Walkly Award for this story and was promoted to be an ABC foreign correspondent.

I will provide a certificate of authenticity with each of my artworks, as a genuine artwork painted by an Anmatyerre Artist.

I want to paint my way out of hell – dispossession and poverty, as an Aboriginal Artist, to hold my head up with dignity and pay my way in society. I wish to thank Mission Australia at Granville for running the New Enterprise Incentive Program – Business Management Certificate IV program which I have just passed, and for their ongoing support as a NEIS participant.

Letty Scott Nupanunga

ATTIJA NIJA
'TREE OF LIFE'

This painting looks at the core energies and magnetic fields of life that's going through us. We are exactly like the tree because we too need healing and we need spirituality, we need blood as a life force, because blood is the life force. It represents all the life, the animals the plants, the people and all the heavenly bodies, everything because it is what we're made of. It means all the power and energy that life can muster.

The roots of the tree go right down to the centre of the earth and it is drawing up water to sustain life. There is a rock formation, when the rock is split in half by the roots of the tree you see the heart of the rock which is the agate. The Tree of Life is encircled by the sun, mother earth because it goes down to the waters and the core, Universe, which you can see at the top of the painting through the veins of the tree, the sunsets, the blue sky, the clouds, and the universe with all its majesty and power.

The Green represents healing to man and earth, universe and everything
When the earth is raped you have to leave it fallow to replenish itself and heal.
The human body need's to be replenished and heal also, when it has been under stress.
It needs the healing to come into the body, to take place.

The Blue represents the spiritual side. Mankind cannot live without the spiritual needs
Just as man needs the physical to sustain us and sustain him, so too we need the spiritual because to sustain him the spirit that gives life to man and the two go together.

The Red represents the blood, the life force, we need that life force.

The Brown and the black is like the wood, earthing to the core of the center of the earth, coming up from there.

The Gold represents the energy field, because we have to have that energy field to be alive, and it goes right up, and right down to the core of the earth, with everything else.

The Blue which goes down to the centre of the earth is life's waters, that replenishes ones body and soul because we need water to live.

The Orange represents the sun, which gives us warmth and energy and helps us grow

Life goes over and engulfs us, its still going to go on, because life just goes on



LETTY SCOTT NUPANUNGA,
ANMATYERRE ABORIGINAL NATION
WESTERN DESERTS OF CENTRAL AUSTRALIA