Ace History Desk – More than 40 years ago, a program was created in the remote Papunya community, roughly 240km north-west of Alice Springs, to help local children learn to read in their own language.

But unlike most school “readers”, these books were created in collaboration with local pioneers in the celebrated Western Desert art movement.

The result was a collection of Pintupi-Luritja bilingual literacy tools that tell stories of first contact, Dreamings, community life, plants, animals and more.

“There’s a saying, ‘flood the place with literature’, which is exactly what they did,” sociologist Professor Vivien Johnson, who worked to digitise the collection, said.

“And the quality of these books and the artwork and the stories is quite extraordinary.

“[It] reflects something about this particular era where Aboriginal people, because of the Land Rights legislation and the temper of the times, thought that they were able to take control of their lives and their children’s education.”

Those books have led to a new exhibition at the National Library of Australia, titled Wangka Wakanutja: The Story of the Papunya Literature Production Centre.

The exhibition offers insight into the remote community of Papunya through the books, which were created between 1979 and 1990, guided by the community’s Elders, and with funding from the Whitlam government.

Kuḻaṯa Dennis Nelson, illustrator and co-curator of the Wangka Wakanutja: The Story of the Papunya Literature Production Centre exhibition. (ABC News: Toby Hunt)normal

‘It’s in our language’

Priscilla Brown, who was raised in Papunya, can remember the joy the readers brought children many years ago.

She was the author of some of the books and also read them to the children.

“I’d go class to class and read stories,”

she said.

She remembers the children saying excitedly, “Read that story again”.

Roslyn Dixon remembers learning to read using the books, watching the artists work, and that her favourite stories were about a rainbow serpent and a woman who became a widow.

“I didn’t know how to read in our language before, and I started by reading little bit by little bit in our language,”

she said.

Exhibition co-curator Charlotte Phillipus in May 2010 at the Papunya School’s Luritja Piipa. Taken by Vivien Johnson. (Supplied: National Library of Australia)normal

In addition to creating the exhibition and digitising the collection, Professor Johnson published a book based on the illustrations and said it was not only children who learned to read from them, but also some adults, many of whom had never before seen the written word or paper.

Professor Johnson said the books were unlike a typical “reader” given to school students.

“They’re not simple,” she said.

“We have a conception, I guess, from our own school days of a reader where, you know, ‘Peter went to the shops’ or something completely boring and meaningless and an illustration alongside it which is completely boring and meaningless. 

“Whereas no one told these people that it was going to be pared back to the absolute essentials, and so [we have] these most beautiful drawings that are replete with extraordinary details of landscape and tracks and birds and lizards and other things happening in the background.

“They’re such extraordinary drawings.”

She said the creators of the illustrations also wanted the children to learn more than just how to read, and so incorporated other themes and stories, which created a “richness”.

“The people sat down and thought, ‘well, what do we want the kids to learn’?” she said.

Professor Johnson said the result was books that taught children in the same style as they would learn from Elders telling stories around the campfire.

Watson Corby, Roslyn Dixon, Professor Vivien Johnson, Kulata Dennis Nelson, Priscilla Brown, Dr Samantha Disbray, and Karen McDonald at the exhibition.(Supplied: National Library of Australia)normal

A ‘treasure’ to be preserved

The readers were packed away for a long time in boxes, Professor Johnson said, but later, she and a colleague worked to preserve them on site in Papunya, in a bid not to remove them from where they were created.

“But, in a way, an exhibition like this seemed the only way. After struggling for so long to get some traction in digitising it and preserving things, was to just show people what it was,”

she said.

The small team wanted people to understand that there was “treasure” in the collection and that it should be preserved.

The collection is now on display in the National Library of Australia, which Professor Johnson said felt like “a dream”.

Sorting readers in the Papunya School’s Luritja Piipa, 2010. Taken by Vivien Johnson. (Supplied: National Library of Australia)normal

“And also for people to have … the amazing work they did over that decade and it be acknowledged and appreciated,” she said.

“And for people to have a glimpse into a world that they would otherwise have no access to, because these books were written by the members of this community for the members of this community, so they could understand their own history and their stories.”

She said Papunya was a hard place to access, but now people could travel there via the exhibition, and by viewing the collection in the database Trove.

The bilingual program no longer runs, something Professor Johnson said was a loss.

“It’s a long way back to a bilingual program, but the language is still living,”

she said.

“So it’s never too late.”

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