Pintupi

Pintupi are a tribe of Aborigines from the Western Desert in Australia, whose home is located in the area west of Lake MacDonald and Lake Mackay in Western Australia. This strain, which inhabited this area for thousands of years as nomads, was settled in the 1940s to 1980s in Papunya, Hermannsburg and Haasts Bluff in the west of the Northern Territory.

Development from the 1950s

During the last decades many Pintupi moved back to their traditional lands as part of the Outstation Movement and founded the Community of Kintore ( Walungurru in the language of Pintupi ) in the Northern Territory and Kiwirrkura and Jupiter Well ( in Pintupi language: Puntutjarrpa ) in Western Australia.

Since they lived in a very inaccessible part of Australia, the Pintupi were among the last to abandon their traditional way of life. They gave their life not voluntarily, but because parts of their habitat has been, nuclear kontamiert for the Blue Streak missile tests in which British and Australian military nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and 1960s conducted: Because of these tests, the residents were in the eastern foothills of the desert in Haasts Bluff, Hermannsburg and Papunya resettled.

In the 1960s the then still living traditionally Pintupi were forcibly relocated close to Alice Springs under the government of Robert Menzies after areas. The government said that they were not yet ripe for modern society and needed more time to assimilate into white society. This policy was also accompanied by the forcible removal of thousands of Aboriginal children from their parents, who were then raised as Stolen generations in institutions of government and the church.

In Papunya, the Pintupi mixed with Warlpiri, Arrernte, and Anmatyerre Luritja, were there but the largest group. The conditions under which the Pintupi had to live there, meant that died 1962-1966 129 people, nearly one-sixth of the population, from treatable diseases such as hepatitis, meningitis and encephalitis.

The last Pintupi, known as " lost tribe " or Pintupi Nine, ended their traditional way of life as nomads of the desert in 1984.

Kinship system of the Pintupi

Together with its neighbors, such as the Warlpiri have the Pintupi a complex kinship system with eight different skin groups, which is complicated by different prefixes for male and female skin names: " Tj " for male, "N " for female:

Prominent Pintupi

Some of the most famous artists of the Aborigine are Pintupi and were connected to the Western Desert Art Movement, influencing art teacher Geoffrey Bardon was born in the 1970s: Among them are Anatjari Tjakamarra, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, Walala Tjapaltjarri and Timmy Payungka Tjapangati.