To Yirawala - ceremony leader, law carrier, medicine man and healer of the Gunwinggu tribe - each painting is like the page of a sacred book, the Aboriginal book, with sacred designs preserving traditional Aboriginal knowledge and beliefs.
Yirawala asked Sandra Le Brun Holmes to write this book so that white Australia might understand the relationship between ceremonial painting and Aboriginal religion and law. Yirawala: Painter of the Dreaming is a testament to his life and works and contains colour plates and explanations of the entire ceremonial series of 139 painting colected by Holmes and now in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra.
