In this painting, Jarinyanu David Downs has depicted events from the Yapurnu song-cycle — a long and complex narrative from his mother’s Country of Injia, south of Balgo, near the border of Western Australian and the Northern Territory.

Downs has shown the Napjarri women singing the Yapurnu song cycle and encircling Jakarra, the ancestral figure, as he dances with ‘tiny trickster murungkurr or baby spirits’ perched atop his headdress. Through the ceremony, Jakarra eventually transforms into brown snakes and returns underground, chasing the women in front of him toward their final resting places. Jakarra becomes a rock, and the women become the nearby stones. In this form, Jakarra signifies a potent force, responsible for the continuing abundance of fat snakes for people to hunt and eat.