Running Water Community Press pays respect to First Nations peoples as the first storytellers and the sovereign owners and custodians of this continent. We honour Elders past, present and emerging and express our solidarity with ongoing struggles for justice, repatriation, community control and truth-telling.
For First People’s visiting this website, we warn you that it contains images and voices of deceased persons.
“Water is my dreaming. My ancestors were the rainmakers.”
Maureen Jipiyiliya Nampijinpa O’Keefe is a Kaytetye-Warlpiri woman from Ali Curung and is the chairperson of Running Water Community Press. She made this video work with Incite Arts in 2020 in which she recites a poem called ‘Gumtress By The River’ over cultural songs from Karlu Karlu (Devil’s Marbles). The songs are sung in Kaytetye-Warlpiri by her mother’s sister, Mona and sister-in-law, Winnie. The first song is called Yinjiri-jiri and is about the first water that flows… carrying the frothy debris with twigs and leaves and how it then flows clean. The second song is called Ngapirinjilayi and is about the river gums standing tall on the riverbank, bits of their white bark flaking off and falling into the water, and the trees soaking up the water, making them green
The first title in our new truth-telling series is out now!
“My father’s story is one that all people can learn from. His story is our story. It is powerful
because it connects us to Indigenous people all over the world who have survived the atrocities
of colonisation and have lived to tell the truth and demand justice.” – Trevor Byrne
Second edition of ‘Arelhekenhe Angkentye; Women’s Talk’ out now!
“I love this book. It holds so much value. Each poem is a gift and it has been put together with so much care.”
– Ellen van Neerven, Mununjali poet
‘Lyapirtneme is an Arrernte word that means growing back, returning. It’s like if a bushfire went through the land, and all the trees burnt down, and the roots underground are still alive. When the rain comes you see little shoots growing out of the bottom of the tree, growing back again.’
— Therese Perrurle Ryder, Arrernte Elder
In this anthology twenty-two Arrernte women share poetry from the heart of the continent around the theme Lyapirtneme.
This publication is a partnership between Akeyulerre Healing Centre, NT Writers Centre and Running Water Community Press.
