Keeping the Wanjinas Fresh: Sam Woolagoodja and the Enduring Power of Lalai

AUSTRALIAN ART WEST AUSTRALIANA Aboriginal Art –

The story of the people of the Wanjinas (or Wandjinas), and their unbroken living cosmology of Lalai – the Dreaming – is manifest most memorably in the dazzling giant designed by Donny Woolagoodja for the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics.

It is also the story of Sam Woolagoodja, who was responsible for repainting the sacred Wanjinas in many of the rock shelters that dot the Kimberley landscape, and was among the first to paint the sacred stories on bark and wood for Worrorra children living far from their homelands.

Story of Donny Woolagoodja, son of Sam Woolagoodja; learning the stories of the Wanjina and Lalai; shift from Kumunya Mission to Mawanjum; paintings as title to land; repainting at rock art sites; plates of Wanjina paintings by Donny Woolagoodja and other artists; includes photograph of ‘Wanjina Awakening Spirit’ designed by Donny Wollagoodja and Peter England for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, Sydney, 2000.

• 293 p., [32] p. of plates : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.reprint

  Bibliographical references (p. 279-285) and index. #011125

• First Nations (AIATSIS) Subject:

  • Sport – Olympic Games
  • Art – Painting
  • History – Biographies – Indigenous
  • Stories and motifs – Wandjina
  • Religions – Christianity – Missions
  • Art – Rock art
  • Stories and motifs – Ancestor spirits
  • Settlement and contacts – Colonisation – 1851-
  • Worrorra people (K17) (WA SD51-16)
  • Mowanjum (WA West Kimberley SE51-07)
  • Kunmunya (WA West Kimberley SE51-07)

  Subject:

  • Woolagoodja, Sam
  • Worora (Australian people)
  • Aboriginal Australians — Western Australia — Kimberley