NPY Women’s Council's Law and Culture meetings

Every year, NPY Women’s Council (NPYWC) host a Law & Culture meeting. At these meetings, Aṉangu and Yarnangu women come together to celebrate and consolidate their traditional cultural practices and identity. Everyone is invited to come along, not just the local community where the meeting is being held.

These women-only gatherings have been running since 1983. They are held on Country, in the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) region. They allow women to connect with elements of their life and culture that are distinct from those of their men, while also strengthening their ties with other women from the NPY region, their land, and important sites.

The meetings are an opportunity for NPYWC staff to spend time with the organisation’s members out on Country and in a bush camp. They are not only a culturally appropriate way to get information out to members, but they have proven to be a great forum for building relationships between community and NPYWC staff.

“With the passing of many senior women who hold important cultural knowledge, law and culture gatherings are now, more than ever, vital to the cultural maintenance for the women of the NPY Lands.”
– NPY Women’s Council, Annual Report 2016-2017.¹NPY Women’s Council, Annual Report 2016-2017, (NPY Women’s Council, 2018), 9, [link]

According to NPYWC, the purpose of Law and Culture gatherings are to:

• facilitate the exchange of traditional knowledge and ceremonial cycles
• perform dances and ceremonial cycles to confirm the importance and power of women’s law
• promote the position and status of senior Aboriginal women from the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara communities
• expose younger women and women dispossessed of their culture to particular practices to gain an understanding of their heritage
• allow relatives from NPY communities who have not seen each other for a long time to reunite.