Mourning for Mungatopi (1974)

This ceremony was held by the Mungatopi family of Snake Bay after the death of a 35-year old family member killed by his wife. The dead man’s father, Geoffrey Mungatopi, and his family requested this film to be made as a public record of a disappearing tradition. Unique to the Tiwi people of Melville and Bathurst islands, the Pukamani ceremony was not only performed to safe-guard the passage of the dead person into the spirit world, but to re-affirm kinship relationships and traditional Tiwi culture.