Thudkee (2007) Painting by Letty Nupanunga

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 ...

• Nationality: AUSTRALIA
• Date of birth : unknown date
• Artistic domains: Represented by a Gallery,
• Groups: Contemporary Australian Artists Artists presented by a gallery