Wandjuk Marika

Wandjuk Djuwakan Marika OBE (c.1927 or 1930 – 16 June 1987), was an Aboriginal Australian painter, actor, composer and Indigenous land rights activist. He was a member of the Rirratjingu clan of the Yolngu people of north-east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia, and the son of Mawalan 1 Marika.

As an actor, Marika appeared in the films Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) and Initiation (1987). He also appeared in the television miniseries Women of the Sun. He was both actor and composer in Where the Green Ants Dream.

In 1979 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

A photographic portrait of Marika by Juno Gemes (1979) hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, and several of his paintings feature in the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

He co-founded the Aboriginal Arts Board in 1973, and became chairman in 1976, a post he held until 1979.

Marika lobbied for the creation of the Aboriginal Artists Agency in 1973 to protect the copyright of Aboriginal artists and Indigenous intellectual property.

Marika wrote frequent but unsuccessful letters to the Australian federal government to protest against mining activities on Yolngu lands. In August 1963 he helped to send the first of several bark petitions to the Commonwealth government protesting the decision to grant mining leases on the Gove Peninsula. The Yirrkala bark petition was the first Indigenous document to be officially recognised and accepted by the Australian Parliament.

His paintings expressed his people’s traditional lore and spiritual beliefs, and included Djang’kawu Story (1960) and Birth of the Djang’kawu Children of Yelangbara (1982). Djang’kawu is the founding ancestor of the Rirratjingu in traditional stories, who gave birth to the clan at Yalangbara. He also painted the story of the Wawilak sisters. The expression of these stories was part of his responsibility as a clan leader, and the skills were passed on by his father, Mawalan 1.

In a 1959 painting, Sea life (Dreaming of the artist’s mother), 1959, Marika expresses elements of his mother’s Warramirri clan. He was so distressed by the reproduction of the Djang’kawu story on a tea towel in 1959 that he stopped painting for years.

Wandjuk Djuakan Marika was born in 1927 (or 1930) on Bremer Island (Dhambaliya) in the Northern Territory. He was the eldest son of Mawalan 1 Marika and his wife Bamatja, and the brother of Banduk Marika, Dhuwarrwarr Marika, Bayngul, and Laklak (all sisters). He was a member of the Rirratjingu group of the Yolngu people.