MAGIC TOUCH
Aboriginal artist and spiritual healer Betty Muffler is bringing hope and healing.
As part of the global September issue, all 26 editions of Vogue have united behind the theme of hope, with each producing a cover that reflects longing for a recovered future. During lockdown in early May, we collaborated with the National Gallery of Australia to commission artist Betty Muffler
– an Anangu/Aboriginal Pitjantjatjara woman and spiritual healer – to bring hope and healing from the heart of her Country. Here, National Gallery Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander curators, Kelli Cole and Aidan Hartshorn, convey the story of her extraordinary gift and the collaboration.
IN THE BLINK of an eye the pandemic has changed our world. We can feel it in our bones. We are anxious about the future. We have turned inwards, searching for the strength from within to get through; searching for hope. As Indigenous Australians we have dealt with many atrocities – from colonisation to now – and while we are resilient peoples, it takes incredible strength to overcome.
Betty Muffler, an Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara woman from remote South Australia, knows the power of finding hope through adversity. Her childhood memories are layered with sadness and grief. When the world went into lockdown, Muffler began painting, and healing. Healing herself, her people and her Country.
Muffler, now in her 70s, is a survivor. She lost many members of her family in the aftermath of the 1950s British atomic tests carried out on Aboriginal Country at Maralinga and Emu Field in South Australia. She is a Ngangkaṟi, a spiritual healer who has special abilities and a reputation throughout her community as one of the best Ngangkaṟi in the Lands.
Muffler’s story begins on her Country in remote South Australia, 800 kilometres north-west of Adelaide, part of the Woomera site where a series of British nuclear tests were conducted in the desert from 1956 to 1963. Maralinga, the place, is a word that translates to thunder from the Iwaidja people from Garig/Port Essington on the Cobourg Peninsula in the Northern Territory. The settlement was established by the British government from 1838 to 1849, with a plan for it to be a trade route for the East India Company through to Southeast Asia. But the weather was deemed too unpredictable as the wet season brought with it the maralinga (thunderous) monsoonal rains. The name Maralinga is also an eerie coincidence – the Iwaidja people were lucky that their Rainbow Serpents, spiritual beings, appear each year to bring on the monsoonal rains, which meant the settlement was unable to continue.
But not so lucky were the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) people who lived in the area further south. Muffler and her parents were living on their Country, Watarru, near the border of South Australia and the Northern Territory. They were totally unaware that their Ancestral Lands had been chosen as the site for the joint British and Australian government military testing facility, an area that covered 52,000 square kilometres, with a 260-squarekilometre testing zone. In the 1950s, Prime Minister Robert Menzies had assured Parliament that “no conceivable injury to life, men or property could emerge from the tests”. Seven tests were conducted from 1956 to 1963 and the site was left contaminated with radiation.
Muffler’s Homelands were afflicted by an ominous “black mist” that rolled across the land, leaving in its path a film of black scum that leached into the tjukula tjuta (rock holes) and waterways. The tests caused displacement, injury and death of her family and people. The impact of radiation was so great the Country’s sickness remains to this day.
Along with her surviving sisters and aunties, Muffler relocated to the Ernabella Presbyterian Mission at Pukatja (Ernabella) situated in the Musgrave Ranges on Pitjantjatjara Country. She later moved to the nearby community of Indulkana, where she still lives and paints at the Iwantja Arts centre – a dynamic Aboriginal-owned art centre on the APY Lands in South Australia. Iwantja Arts is a professional artmaking studio that supports the careers of more than 30 artists, including high-profile artists such as Vincent Namatjira, Peter Mungkuri and Kaylene Whiskey.
Muffler’s robust artistic practice is primarily painting and drawing, but she is also an accomplished weaver, creating amazing woven baskets and other sculptural forms supported by the Tjanpi Desert Weavers. Alongside maintaining a rigorous artistic practice, Muffler is also a director for Iwantja Arts and a cultural advisor to the APY Collective – a collective of 10 Indigenous-owned and governed enterprises working with a united vision on large-scale ambitious artistic projects to create opportunities and increased capacity for artists and their families.
Indigenous-run art centres are the heart of community life and provide employment, education, cultural and language preservation, economic development, health benefits and community cohesion. Across Australia arts centres have felt the impact of having to close their doors because of the pandemic. The Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre in Yirrkala, Northeast Arnhem Land – one of the most prosperous community-controlled art centres in the Northern Territory – was estimated to lose millions in revenue due the closure, affecting not only artists but their families and the wider community.
To protect the Aṉangu people, the APY Lands shut down their communities and restricted entry in February 2020. Aṉangu people were also directed not to practise inma (cultural song and dance), due to social distancing restrictions, but they continued to have access and connections to their land while teaching the younger generation about their culture and enduring belonging to Country.
Like many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia, the Aṉangu people have had a continuous connection to their land for more than 65,000 years. Their relationship to Country is vital to their wellbeing and centred on respect and care for the land. A key part of caring for Country is the continuation of cultural practices, visiting significant sites and performing inma. By doing so, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people believe that the land will continue to sustain them. Life on Country revolves around the Tjukurpa (stories).
APY Arts Centre Collective member Sally Scales describes Covid-19 as an “absolutely terrifying experience” for Aṉangu. “Social distancing, maintaining best-practice hygiene, eating well – we don’t have that privilege,” she explains. “Aṉangu families often have over 15 family members from four generations living in their two-bedroom house. Our stores are so expensive and there is so much more soft drink than fresh food; there’s hardly any fresh or healthy food at all. We have been so full of anxiety hoping that Covid-19 doesn’t make it to APY.”
Because of Muffler’s renowned reputation, she has been in high demand during the pandemic to heal others. Ngangkaṟi are usually chosen at birth by Elders of the community and they possess the power to remove pain and bad energy from people who have succumbed to sickness. Ngangkaṟi wisdom has been passed on
to Muffler through the paternal line. Her aunties have been an undeniable source of spiritual and cultural knowledge. Muffler’s powers are so strong that she frequently leaves her Country to attend hospitals and clinics to help and heal Aṉangu family and friends, more so in recent months. While modern medicine assists to heal the physical body, Muffler’s energy also has the power to heal the spirit.
As a Ngangkaṟi, she does not always need to physically travel to be able to heal. While in transient sleep the spirit of the Ngangkaṟi assists in the action of healing others. “I am a Ngangkaṟi,” explains Muffler. “I’ve got an eagle’s spirit so I can stay at home here and in my sleep I send my eagle spirit across the desert to look for sick people, then I land next to them and make them better. Ngangkaṟi’s can see right through people to what sickness is inside, then they can heal them straight away.”
Muffler’s paintings have become an extension of her ability as well as translations of her Tjukurpa (dreaming stories). Her works offer an insight to the connectedness she and her people have with what nonIndigenous people term ‘the Dreaming’, the space in which her spirit flies in search of the sick. Although sometimes explained as a place of ethereal spirituality, for Indigenous people the connection of the Tjukurpa runs much deeper, it is an incredibly complex space which Indigenous people share and occupy with their ancestors, creation beings and other Indigenous Australians across the country. A simpler explanation of the Tjukurpa is that of a symbolic doorway that remains open and creates a fluid energy between, and around, Indigenous peoples. It is a space where time collapses and the Western concept of past, present and future combine in presenting the idea that space, time and people are woven across one another rather than the suggested lineal form of the three. For Muffler, her connection to the Tjukurpa becomes a spiritual awakening and extension she translates across the canvas.
Muffler’s paintings are a depiction of her Country, which is a direct connection to her songlines, a shared story path that has been mapped by her ancestors, her marali (journeys) that her spirit travels on through her Tjukurpa.
“Paluru walaruru, Tjukurpa paluru nyinanyi nyinanyi paluru … ngayuku mama ka ngayulu kuwari nyinanyi-tu … paluru iniwai ngayula pakani. Paluru nyinanyi in the tree, punungka, ka ngayula mapan wiyaringkula paluru ngayula ananyi tjungu … uwa ngangkari … ‘uwa ankula kurunypa mantjila … munu ngalyakati.’ Ngayulu patara kulini … paluru wiruringu.”
“The eagle is there, he created that place in the Tjukurpa, so that is my fathers, so now I am the same. His spirit is within me and it can fly off with ease, accompanying me in my Ngangkaṟi work. [In this painting] he is sitting in a tree nearby, watching. When I have finished assessing the patient, I say to the Ngangkaṟi eagle with me: ‘Yes, go and get that [sick person’s] spirit and bring it back.’ I wait, knowing that when the sick person gets their spirit back they get well.”
Just like the way of a Ngangkaṟi, Muffler’s paintings are imbued with power and sing as they vibrate with energy. The execution is incredibly detailed and layered with iconography. To the trained eye they are a depiction of connection that revolves around her Aṉangu people, their energy, Muffler’s spirit, the energy she draws upon from her Country and how all these concepts come together in the sacred space of the Tjukurpa.
Muffler’s canvases become a performative space while visually documenting the spiritual experience of a Ngangkaṟi healer and their marali. The energy in the painting comes from the visual marali and activation of her tjulpu eagle spirit, while invoking the pulsating energies of the people that Muffler helps in healing, as well as the energy from the country’s big rains and healing of the waters.
“Kapi pulkaringkupai puyinangka panya – ‘hey kapi pulka palatja! Nyanganyi’ – kapi pulka ngalya puyini: ‘Ooow!’ Ka Ngangkaṟi wangkanyi kapi palunya wankanyi ‘purkarari tjukaru ngalya puyila!’ uwa Ngangkaṟi.” “The waterholes fill when it rains. You know how you feel when you see rain: ‘Hey, that looks like big rain!’ You see this big rain coming towards you – and go: ‘Ooow!’ Well, the Ngangkaṟi is talking with it, the rain clouds, essentially saying: ‘Make sure you come straight here, rain, in this direction!’ Yes, it is also part of being Ngangkaṟi.”
Finding out her painting would grace the cover of Vogue has been a big surprise for Muffler. “I’m so happy for my painting to be on the cover of Vogue Australia!” she says. “I’ve been working for a very a long time as a Ngangkaṟi and an artist, and I can’t believe my artwork is going to be on the magazine. Through my paintings you can see my Ngangkaṟi work: watching over people and also looking after Country. My Country. This place is very important – we all need to look after each other and respect our home.”
Betty Muffler’s painting, Ngangkari Ngura (Healing Country) (2020), was commissioned by Vogue Australia and gifted to the National Gallery of Australia where it is currently on display. Represented by Iwantja Arts, Muffler was awarded the Emerging Artist prize in the 2017 NATSIAA and shortlisted for the John Fries Award in 2018. Muffler is also featured in the upcoming Tarnanthi 2020 art fair with the Art Gallery of South Australia, and will be featured in the APY Collective exhibition Kulata Tjuta at Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes in Brittany, France, later this year.
“Through my paintings you can see my Ngangkari work: watching over people and also looking after Country. My Country. This place is very important”