Karen Bird Ngale

Karen Bird Ngale paints Awelye (women's ceremony and body paint) and bush tucker, particularly Alpar, the rat tail bush medicine plant. Senior women taught her the stories, songs and dances of Utopia ceremony, and she learned to paint from her father, Lindsay Bird Mpetyane, a senior elder for Ilkawerne country. She lives at Akaye Soakage in Utopia, and her sisters Rosie and Jessie Bird also paint.