Golden dreams: place and mining in the Tanami desert

Abstract

The Tanami Desert is classed as a semi-desert and covers a large area of land in the central-west of the Northern Territory of Australia as well as a much smaller area of the north-east of Western Australia. The majority of the Tanami Desert has been inhabited by Warlpiri speaking Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years; in their terminology from time immemorial since the creative period, or jukurrpa, that transformed the world from a featureless mass to the form it is today. For Walpiri the landscape of the Tanami Desert is covered with places that mark the events and histories of the extraordinary beings and ancestors of the jukurrpa whose essences remain in these places, the land and the worlds above and below the surface of the earth ......