PAULINA PURUNTATAMERI

Paulina Puruntatameri, who is also known as Jedda, is a senior Cultural Leader and advisory to the Munipi Boards of Directors“I only started painting  a few few years  ago but I was already working at Munupi providing Tiwi language translations for stories connecting to our paintings. My interests are looking and preserving culture, language, art and songs. One of my passions is digital archiving and repatriation of our old artifacts that have been taken from the Tiwi Islands and one day they will returns back to their rightful place.. One day this will happen!”“It’s for our future generation to learn and respect and embrace their cultural side. Who they are and where they are from. We as the Tiwi people are the custodians of our lands. We must speak for the land and make sure we look after the land and the sea.” “In my painting of the Maruti, the jikipayinga (female crocodile), she leaves her salt water and comes into the fresh water to build her nest and lay crocodile eggs. Sometimes she has to leave her nest and look for food. The Tiwi people would steal her eggs! She will come back and be very angry!”“With the education system today a teacher may have 14 students in class, however, when school ends she ends up with only 7. What happened to the other 7? Maybe the system did not tend to their needs. The moral of my story is that the female crocodile was not a careless mother but had to feed herself. She did not have a baby sitter like we do.”