Albert Namatjira (1902-1959) was the first Australian Aboriginal artist to receive national acclaim from the white community.

Albert Namatjira was born in 1902 in the Central Australian desert, which is one of the harshest environments in the world. His parents were Namatjira and Ljukuta of the Aranda people, and in accordance with their customs the child would normally remain unnamed until old enough to appreciate the significance of his given names and to be initiated into the group's complex social structure.

Australia had been invaded by Europeans little more than a century before Namatjira's birth, and the story of that occupation was similar throughout the country. The indigenous peoples, whose history spanned at least 40,000 years, were seen as a nuisance and were slaughtered in great numbers or else gathered and moved from their hunting grounds, where sheep and cattle soon replaced the native game. The bases of Aboriginal economic...