Pantjiti McKenzie Tjiyangu

Pantjiti was born in 1942 and her ngura/home country is near the Blackstone Ranges in Western Australia. She and her husband have four grown children, and numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren. She now divides her time between Alice Springs where her husband is a dialysis patient, and Ernabella, started by the Presbyterian Board of Missions in 1937, and the first permanent settlement on the Anangu Pitjantjatara yankunytjatjara Lands, in far north-west South Australia.

As a child Pantjiti lived in the bush in the traditional way with her father and his two wives. For a short time she lived in the children's dormitory at Warburton. After her father and one of his wives died, his second wife, Pantjiti's mother, and her family group, walked 600 kilometres east to Ernabella to visit family. Throughout her childhood, adolescence, and young womanhood, Pantjiti moved constantly between the communities of Ernabella, Mulga Park, Amata, Areyonga and further out west travelling often by foot and sometimes in mission trucks or riding donkeys over an area of 80,000 square kilometres. During this time she became very skilled in the art of gathering bush foods, digging for rabbit and hunting.

She has worked at both Ernabella and Amata in the community art centres. Like many of her generation, Pantjiti was highly involved with Ernabella (now Pitjantjatara) Choir and was present on many of their important trips around Australia, including a performance at the Adelaide Art Festival in 2004.

When Ernabella Video and Television (EVTV) began in 1984 Pantjiti and her husband, Simon Tjiyangu Mckenzie, became custodian managers and producers, and later on were BRACS workers (Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Community Services) for PY Media (Pitjantjatara/Yankunytjatjara Media). over the next twelve years they produced over one thousand videotapes documenting Anangu Pitjantjatara life and culture from the inside.

Pantjiti is a highly entrepreneurial woman, and a strong leader, heavily involved in many traditional song and dance activities. Pantjiti is a great teacher, to Anangu and Piranpa/white people alike, of multiple aspects of Anangu Pitjantjatjara culture.

Tjanpi Desert Weavers is an Aboriginal women's fibre art social enterprise that started in the Central and Western deserts of Australia in 1995 through the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council.

• © Artist image taken by Arts Photographer Sabine Haider, Central Art 2009