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The Depository documents 8 techniques in Australia; by risk level: 3 critically endangered, 3 endangered, 2 vulnerable. Each record opens with a public summary; the full research record is free to view once registered.
Bark painting is the primary visual art form of Arnhem Land Aboriginal communities — paintings in natural ochre pigments on sheets of stringybark (Eucalyptus tetrodonta) that are stripped, flattened, heated, and prepared as a smooth…
Ochre — iron oxide mineral pigments ranging from yellow to red to purple — is the primary painting material of Aboriginal Australian visual culture, used in bark painting, body painting, rock art, and ceremony for at least 65,000 years.
Warlukurlangu Artists is a community-owned Aboriginal art center in Yuendumu (Northern Territory) that supports the contemporary acrylic painting tradition of the Warlpiri people — one of the defining art movements of the 20th century.
The carving of boomerangs — curved wooden throwing implements developed independently by Aboriginal Australians and refined over an extended history into two functionally and technically distinct categories: lightweight returning…
Tjanpi (an Ngaanyatjarra word for grass) is the coiled grass weaving tradition of women from the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara, and Yankunytjatjara (NPY) communities of Australia's Western Desert — producing coiled fiber sculptures that…
The Torres Strait Islander peoples — the Aboriginal and Pacific peoples of the islands between Australia and Papua New Guinea — maintain a marine shell inlay and carving tradition centered on the pearl shell (Pinctada maxima) and the cone…
The making of the didgeridoo (yidaki in Yolŋu language) — the long, hollow wind instrument originating in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, and among the oldest wind instruments in the world, with origins estimated at 1,000 to 1,500 years…
The Yolŋu people of northeast Arnhem Land (Northern Territory) maintain a pandanus mat weaving tradition that is among the finest in the world — using Pandanus spiralis stripped, processed, and dyed with plant sources to produce mats of…