Tjunkiya Napaltjarri

[3] The ambiguity around the year of birth is in part because Indigenous Australians operate using a different conception of time, often estimating dates through comparisons with the occurrence of other events.

[4] 'Napaljarri' (in Warlpiri) or 'Napaltjarri' (in Western Desert dialects) is a skin name, one of sixteen used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous people.

A Pintupi speaker, Tjunkiya was born in the area northwest of Walungurru (known as Kintore, Northern Territory), near the Western Australian border, and west of Alice Springs), after which her family moved to Haasts Bluff.

She became second wife to Toba Tjakamarra, father of one of the prominent founders of the Papunya Tula art movement, Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula.

In the western desert communities such as Kintore, Yuendumu, Balgo, and on the outstations, people were beginning to create art works expressly for exhibition and sale.

[2] Along with sister Wintjiya and other women, she participated in a painting camp in 1994 which resulted in "a series of very large collaborative canvases of the group's shared Dreamings".

[15] Sources differ on when Tjunkiya and her sister Wintjiya had the cataracts removed: Vivien Johnson implies around 1999,[7] but art centre coordinator Marina Strocchi, who worked closely with the women, states that both had the operation in 1994.