[2] Narritjin Maymuru was born in North-East Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia circa 1916 and died in 1981.
[5] Narritjin Maymuru faced a near death experience in 1943 when the artists was around 30 years old, a ship he was on, HMAS Patricia Cam, was bombed and began to sink.
Some were killed, including Djalalingba's two brothers, Djinipula and Djimanbuy, and others were wounded.” After the first bomb Narritjin Maymuru temporary passed out and awoke to find himself trapped under floating wreckage.
[5] Narritjin Maymuru's earliest surviving paintings were commissioned on behave of the anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt, and completed in 1946.
Through this relationship Narritjin's work began to be represented in galleries and museums across Australia and overseas, especially in the United States.
[7] By 1978 Narritjin Maymuru alongside his son Banapana were jointly awarded the Creative Arts Fellowship at the Australian National University in Canberra.
The award included a three month fellowship in the arts faculty at Australian National University, in which Narritjin Maymuru would lecture in the departments of prehistory and anthropology.
[10] Narritjin Maymuru remains a widely acclaimed artist internationally, his paintings feature in galleries and museums globally.
In the 1960s Narritjin taught his daughters Bumiti and Galuma the madayin miny’tji (sacred clan design) encouraging them to paint.
[14] The Yirrkala Church Panels featured no Christian imagery, rather they display an episodic narrative that documents the creation stories and journeys of ancestral beings across Yolŋu land alongside sacred designs.
The Methodist minister Reverend Edgar Wells recalled Narritjin Maymuru proposing "a painting or something" in order to resist the threat of the land takeover.
The petitions were written in both English and Yolngu matha and were presented in the Australian Parliament's House of Representative on 14 August 1963.
The petitions requested that “before they endure the fate of the other dispossessed Australian Indigenous groups that have had their land and sacred sites destroyed, they request that an enquiry be held with appropriate translators so that they may be heard and consulted about the fate of this special place.”[13] The bark petitions were the first example of a formal assertion of Indigenous native title within Australia.