Her first time she saw whitefella she reckoned it was a monster

“The first time she saw whitefella she reckoned it was a monster, like a ghost. She was scared, she ran home.”

Noelia Yukultji-Ward was just a teenager when she and eight family members, since dubbed the “Pintupi Nine” came out from the Gibson desert, traditional Pintupi country in central Australia, and saw white people for the first time.

It was 1984.

They’d been tracked down by family members from Kiwirrkurra, Australia’s most remote community, close to the Northern Territory–Western Australia border. They knew some of the family were still living “out bush” and, having seen two of the men, went out searching.

Speaking to a small group of people at the Garma festival in north-east Arnhem Land, her daughter, Lisa Ward, translated as Yukultji-Ward described how she and her family arrived in Kiwirrkurra.

Her mother knew everyone in the Kiwirrkurra mob was family, but Yukultji-Ward was terrified by the pale-skinned people. Laughing, Ward says her mother thought they were ghosts “coming to kill us and eat us”.

“But the whitefella had someone from Kiwirrkurra [with him] to tell them to stop hiding and come meet family.”

Yukultji-Ward was scared; the men gave her clothes but she didn’t want to wear them.

Then they got in a car.

“She was looking out, and all this land was moving,” says Ward, laughing.

“All the trees were moving, and she was in the vehicle and she asked her mum, why are all the trees moving? Her mum said she was moving.”

There were – and remain – sources of sadness among her people. Some have alcohol problems. A number of family members are ill, and some have had to leave country to live in Alice Springs, 850km to the east, for dialysis treatment.There are not enough services in remote communities to help the growing rates of Indigenous people with end-stage kidney disease.

“There’s not much old people, too much sugar, kidney problems,” says Yukultji-Ward.

“But we keep our country strong,” she says. “We go out bush, we work with the [Indigenous Protected Area] and land management. We care for our country, working together with whitefellas.”

At the Garma festival, Yukultji-Ward will also present the work she and others in Kiwirrkurra do as Indigenous rangers, caring for country under government-funded programs. The Kiwirrkurra rangers manage 43,000 sq km of land under their Indigenous Protected Area (IPA), designated in 2014. In June they hosted a bilby protection festival.

“It’s good working with the IPA and keeping country, walking around,” she says later, giving the thumbs up.

Her daughters also work with the rangers. The program brings the young people together with the senior members of the community, training, learning and connecting to country.

“We are working together,” she says.