The Pintupi

The Pintupi people

The Pintupi, the last nomadic tribe to encounter people from European-Australia is a group of people who lived a traditional hunter-gatherer desert-dwelling life in a very remote part of Australia’s Gibson Desert. They are sometimes also referred to as “the lost tribe”.  There are only 390 people of The Pintupi tribe but as now, the government doesn’t have the exact number of Pintupi but there are less of 100 people. 

Tools and implements of traditional manufacture include digging sticks and stone-cutting tools, boomerangs, spears, and spear throwers. Shelters used to be made of local materials, but now they are constructed from canvas or corrugated iron. 

Pintupi tools - Boomerangs

Most manufactured items are of a ritual nature.  They survive by making use of the things around them. For instance, the animals and plants are things that they are frequently used.  

The Pintupi were traditionally a hunting and gathering people. For communal use, they hunt kangaroos, and emus when such are available, they hunt feral cats, smaller marsupials, and rabbits at other times. Food so obtained is shared throughout the residential group. 

Central to Pintupi beliefs is the Dreaming (tjukurrpa ) and “Death and Afterlife”. The Dreaming is both past and present. In its unfolding that is, through the activities not only were the physical features of the world created but also the social order according to which Pintupi life is conducted.

Yet the Dreaming is also ongoing, providing the force that animates and maintains life and the rituals that are required to renew or enrich that force. Meanwhile, Death and Afterlife is behaviour after the death of a loved one focuses on the grief of the deceased's survivors. 

The spirit is thought to survive the body and to remain in the area of this first burial, only departing after a second ceremony is held months later. Where the spirit ultimately goes is vaguely described as somewhere "up in the sky."