Painting depicts the Honeybee dance, performed in the larger Narra ceremony

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Type: Bark paintings
Place: Milingimbi, Central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia
Materials: Bark, Pigment, Plant fibre, Wood
Collection: Crafts Council of Australia collection
Accession number: 1985.0255.0001

Description

Ochres on bark, wooden restrainers. Painting divided in two panels. Top contains a dancer. His body is coloured in ochre and his mouth, eyes and nose are white. His body is surrounded with a white line. Around the man there is a diamond pattern. On either side of the man there are two elliptic black forms which are a representation of hardwood totems. They are carried in the ceremony by performers called Birrimanira. These totems represent the spirits of the two most important ancestral heroes of the dreamtime, Bonaitcha and Laintjun. It was these two men who gave the language, the land, rituals and totems to the Yiritja moiety people. The man represents one of the dancers taking part in the Garngun ceremony, a ritual connected with the important and larger Narra ceremony. The diamond pattern around the dancer represents honeybee, the sacred design for Yiritja people. On the lower panel, on the right side there are seven fish surrounded with white crosshatching. In the middle there is a rectangular form filled with diamond pattern. Diamond pattern represents the dancing ground on which the ceremony is performed. Part of the ceremony features around renewal of life in natural species, so that people may be assured of a plentiful supply of fish, plants and animals in the coming seasons. Honeybee dance is performed in the larger Narra ceremony, when men simulate the motions and sounds of bees wings. Artist: Lumaluma. Tribe: Duluwangr

This is part of a collection of 8 paintings that the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies purchased in November 1974 from the Craft Council of Australia. These were then placed in the Australian Institute of Anatomy's (AIA) National Ethnographic Collection (NEC). The AIA closed in 1985 and the NEC was then transferred to the National Museum of Australia.

Read live from the Museum's Collection API (12/11/2026, 4:58:34 am). Record last updated by the Museum 2025-09-03. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.