Papunya, an assimilationist settlement 258 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, opened in March 1959. The original population of around 600 included 450 Aboriginal people who were moved there from Haasts Bluff.
In 1971, a little over a decade after Namatjira's death at the same settlement, 30 or so senior Aboriginal men who were in exile from their country took up painting as part of a fight to save their culture from extinction. Initially, they transferred their ceremonial designs from body, object or ground onto recycled sheets of scrap board, creating paintings to be sold both inside and outside the community and forging a method later adopted by artists in Balgo and other Western Desert devised communities.
In 1972 the artists formed their own company, Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd. The model has been adopted by many other artist co-operatives throughout Indigenous Australia that have since been formed. The company, financed by painting sales, continues to grow.
(Walangurru) Kintore is a Pintupi township 280 kilometres west of Papunya that was established in August 1981 in response to the outstation movement that gathered momentum during the late 1970s as the Northern Territory (Land Rights) Act 1976 began to take effect.
The move of 150 Pintupi people to Walangurru depleted the population of Papunya significantly and precipitated other moves to Mount Liebig, Mount Allan and Alice Springs. In the 1990s the focus of the Papunya Tula movement shifted eventually from Papunya to Walangurru.
