Tjanpi Desert Weavers

Tjanpi, meaning ‘dry grass’, is a program working with Indigenous women to create meaningful employment in their homelands. 

The Tjanpi Desert Weavers began as a series of basket-weaving workshops in Papulankutja, WA, initiated by the NPY Women’s Council in 1995. Weaving skills were quickly shared with relations in neighbouring communities, and basket-making spread across the NPY lands and beyond.

These women come from 28 remote communities across 350,000 square kilometres in the central and western desert regions of Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory.

Desert grasses - minarri, wangurnu and ilintji are the essential components of the baskets and the sculptures that began three years later.  While out collecting grass, women take time to hunt, gather food, visit sacred sites and teach their children about country.

At its core, Tjanpi is about family and community. The Tjanpi family is now a wide-reaching network of more than 400 mothers, daughters, aunties, sisters and grandmothers whose shared stories, skills and experiences are the bloodline of the movement.

‘Weaving money is not big bucks in one hit, which inevitably leads to complicated social consequences,’ says Thisbe Purich, former Tjanpi coordinator. ‘The money produced from weaving sustains people on a daily basis, through the purchase of food, clothing and blankets. It also gives women self-esteem and status, and helps them to keep families together.’

Tjanpi’s most publicised achievement occurred only 10 years after the first weaving workshops. A group of 20 Ngaanyatjarra Tjanpi weavers won the major prize at the 22nd Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award with a work that is becoming an iconic piece of Australian art.

The recognition for their Tjanpi Toyota alerted the arts industry to the Tjanpi weaving phenomenon, and helped Artsupport Australia broker a partnership with the Balnaves Foundation.

Tjanpi is the only group in the NPY lands who provide opportunities for employment and expression through fibre art. This philanthropic funding allows them to offer skills development workshops, guest artist-in-residence programs, as well as opportunities to attend national and international conferences. It will also fund a book documenting the family and cultural history behind the growth of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers.

Tjanpi Desert Weavers manager Karen Rieder says, the project money gave them greater capacity to meet the artists’ desire for creative and technical skills development and to further build Tjanpi’s profile in the art industry.

‘Opportunities for employment in remote and regional communities are so limited and for many women weaving is a lifeline,’ Karen said.