Wilya Ajjul Janta (we all stand strong together), is a Wumpurrarni housing organisation with its roots in Tennant Creek.

For its founders Patricia Frank, Norman Frank, Serena Morton, Dianne Stokes and Jimmy Frank, it has been an exciting journey they will be explaining at the Papulu-ku Nyinjjiki Junkurrakur Exhibition (seeing houses in Tennant Creek) next Friday 26th January from 5pm at Nyinkka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre. For full details of the exhibition, check out the advertisement on page 3 of [the issue].

The exhibition will showcase the models that our founders and architects have designed together and display photographs and artworks that explain the Wilya Janta journey to date.

The remote housing crisis that has rolled across the Barkly since colonisation is the greatest driver of poor health and social well-being.

The way that town camps have come to look has often had very little to do with how the community would like to see housing, and the new houses being built by the government pay no respect to culture and are very poorly designed for a hot climate.

Badly designed houses don’t allow people and communities to thrive.

Wilya Janta is building two demonstration homes on the northern edges of town that show a better way forward.

These homes will allow occupants to honour traditional avoidance relationships more easily, will have lots of outdoor living space, will have food preparation areas that are how people want to cook and are designed to make everyone feel comfortable all the time.

Wilya Janta is working with some of the best architects in Australia (including Professor Paul Memmott who many people in Tennant will know), designed by scientists and Warumungu people who have put their knowledge together to build what it believes will be the best thermally performing homes in Central Australia or the Barkly.

Homes that allow families and cultures to thrive even when it is very hot and do not need lots of power to keep them cool.

And most importantly, Wilya Janta aims to prove that beautiful, culturally appropriate housing that is designed for the climate is not only possible but also affordable, pointing to other ways the government might invest future housing funds in homes that people want to live in rather than being forced to live in. Wilya Ajjul Janta means that the whole of the Tennant Creek community stands strong to right the Wumpurrarni housing wrongs, making Tennant a great place for everyone to live together.

This article appeared in Tennant & District Times, 19 January 2024.