Lanita Numina Napanangka / Dingo Dreaming (6C)

Born: c. 1965
Community: Utopia, Central Desert
Outstation: Stirling Station
Language: Anmatyerre

Lanita is from Sterling Station which is Anmatyarre country near Alice Springs and Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia. She was born in the desert homelands and doesn’t know her birth date. She is now living in Darwin along with her sisters Caroline, Jacinta, Louise and Sharon, also talented artists.

The sisters were all taught to paint by their mother, Barabara Mbitjana and their famous aunties, Kathleen and Gloria Petyarre. A painting of Lanita’s was presented to Princess Mary and Prince Frederick of Denmark as a wedding gift by the Danish community of Darwin NT.

The style of artwork belongs to her desert people of Central Australia. Her art themes represent body markings for women’s ceremonies and stories of hunting and gathering in their traditional country.

Dingo Dreaming relates the story of an old Dingo Man who travelled throughout the desert, sometimes as a dingo and sometimes as a human ancestral being, instructing the people living at isolated camps in law, language and ceremony.

Once when he travelled from Yuendumu to Arrangi he mated with a female dingo who produced many cubs, and this is now regarded as a sacred site.

Lanita has depicted a number of ceremonial sites along the creeks or rivers. This is a sacred area where the Dingo Ceremony is still performed today.