WANAMPI DANCE PERFOMANCE
 bringing white and black together to dance the sacred Rainbow Serpent of the land.

A group of senior Anangu custodians (aboriginal people from Anangu, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara lands in the far North West of South Australia) will lead a performance of the Wanampi Inma (Rainbow Serpent Dance) at this year’s Global Carnival. This dance is a rare and true reconciliation Inma and will be jointly shared and experienced at the festival by aboriginal and non-aboriginal people, reflecting and amplifying this historic passage in our history and our future together in this beautiful land. One of the principal aims is to teach and perform this unique Wanampi Inma of the desert country, seen as jointly held by white and black.

The Dance
The Wanampi Dance came about as a collaborative venture between senior men and women from Angatja Community and other nearby homelands and Greg Snowdon.  It started in 1993 when, through a dream, Spirit directed Charlie Ilyatjari to teach this dance to Greg and a group of men who had come to share in work of the spirit.  After that, the dance was performed a number of times at Angatja and other communities throughout the Pitjantjatjara lands under the direction of senior custodians of the Wanampi story, especially Charlie Ilyatjari.  It is an extraordinarily colourful dance with amazing head-dresses and it calls on the rainbow serpent energy of the land.  It is a rain dance, a dance for country and also a special dance about the relationship between men and women in this land.

Since Charlie Ilyatjari passed away in 2001, the inma has only been done once in late 2001.  Recently, a senior lawman from the APY (Anangu, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara lands) invited Greg to come back to do the Wanampi Inma again.  It feels that the time has come to do the dance again for the country to bring rain and spirit to the land.  The Anangu have responsibility for this inma. Andy Tjilari is principal Wanampi dance and song master and original teacher of this dance as well as senior lawman and Ngankari (traditional healer). A team of other senior men and women will accompany Andy from communities on the APY lands. They are also exceptional artists and craftspeople as well as being holders of many other songs and dances of the Tjukurpa, the Dreaming. The core of traditional knowledge is held in the songs and dances of the land and when people learn the songs and dances, they are able to learn something very deep about the essence of this country and our responsibility to care for the land and keep it alive.

In late 1979, Greg Snowden started as a community development worker with the Pitjantjatjara people of Pipalyatjara, a community on the APY land. He has brought many people out to the APY lands to learn and share in the culture and in more recent years has been working to find ways to bring more of the desert culture to where most of the non-Indigenous people live.  This led to bringing a group of 12 senior Pitjantjatjara and Ngaanyatjara women from Kalka, Pipalyatjara and Irrunytju to Bourke for the Yaamma Festival in October 2005 and then on to Melbourne, Geelong and Adelaide for visits to people and places, bringing the Dreaming into family celebrations, private homes, the central Melbourne business district and AFL house.

These trips are about making friends, breaking down barriers, realising that such ventures are always a two way process and that we probably have more to learn from the Indigenous people about life, values, priorities and connection to the land and each other than they have to learn from us.  As our economic and climatic woes increase, now is the time to listen hard to the longest living culture on the planet.

Other Offerings.
This event is also an opportunity for these artists to show their extraordinary skills in art and craft (painting, wood carving, weaving, batik and other mediums) and perhaps do some collaboration with non-indigenous or local indigenous artists. All of them are singers and dancers but most are also exceptional artists and craftspeople and this event also creates an opportunity for indigenous and non-indigenous people to work together to develop appropriate ways to live harmoniously in this land with each other, the environment and the climate.

As well as providing an opportunity for Anangu to teach about their culture and offer non-indigenous Australians a chance to learn these important means of connecting to country, it will also give the men and women from this remote area a respite from the harshness of their life and world in the middle of the desert, an opportunity to create, develop and sell art and a base for exploring new country and meeting new friends.

This will be a truly unique and historic event for us as a festival, community and country.