Dr B Marika AO (1954–2021), Yolgnu leader, printmaker, arts administrator, environmentalist and cultural activist, was a member of the renowned Marika family of artists and activists. She grew up in Yirrkala in north-east Arnhem Land, where she was taught painting by her father, Mawalan Marika, an artist and statesman who in 1963 helped initiate Australia's first Aboriginal land rights case. Among the first women to paint ancestral creation stories – a practice traditionally observed only by men – she carved exquisite clan designs onto linoprints. Moving to Sydney in 1980, Marika studied at the National Art School, also working as a translator and in film and television and later completing residencies at the Canberra School of Art and Flinders University in South Australia.
Returning to Yirrkala in 1988, Marika managed the Buku-Larrnggay Arts Centre while continuing to work as an artist and educator. After her print Djanda and the Sacred Waterhole (1988) was reproduced without permission on rugs made in Vietnam, a Federal Court judgement awarded damages to Marika and seven other artists; her story featured in the 1997 documentary Copyrights, exploring the Aboriginal concept of ownership as it relates to art. Marika received the Australia Council's Red Ochre Award in 2002, and in 2005 she won the Best Bark Prize at the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. Marika served on boards for organisations including the Australia Council, the National Gallery of Australia, the Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory and Bangarra Dance Theatre. For more than three decades she was involved in education, conservation and advocacy work as a member of bodies such as the Northern Land Council and Landcare.
A traditional landowner at Yirrkala, she established the Mawalan 1 Gamarrwa Nuwul Association for the management of Rirratjingu lands in 1992 and was later involved in securing heritage protection for Yalangbara, a site of great cultural significance. The National Museum of Australia's 2011 exhibition, Yalangbara: Art of the Djang'kawu, celebrated the artworks of three generations of the Marika family. The accompanying book, which Marika co-edited, was joint winner of the 2009 Chief Minister's Northern Territory Book History Awards. In 2019 Marika received an Order of Australia for 'distinguished service to the visual arts, particularly to Indigenous printmaking and bark painting, and through cultural advisory roles' and she was the Northern Territory Australian of the Year for 2020. Her work is represented in public collections in Australia, New Zealand and the US.
