Mawalan Marika (c. 1908–1967), ceremonial leader, political activist and artist, was leader of the Rirratjingu clan, upon whose Arnhem Land country the Yirrkala Mission was established in the mid-1930s. As non-Indigenous people arrived and remained in the area he became an important negotiator between the newcomers and the Yolngu. During the 1950s, he encouraged the commercial production of bark paintings at the mission, hoping to promote understanding of Yolgnu spiritual beliefs and traditions. In the late 1940s, he contributed to a set of 365 crayon drawings made for anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt, and painted large bark works for the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He contributed to the Yirrkala church panels, and was instrumental in sending the bark petition to Canberra that has since become a key document in the history of Aboriginal land rights legislation. He was one of the first Indigenous artists to teach his daughters (Banduk and Dhuwarrwarr) to paint; his son, Wandjuk Djuwakan Marika OBE (1927-1987), was chair of the Aboriginal Arts Board from 1975 to 1980 and a highly influential Indigenous spokesperson and artist of the 1960s and 1970s.
