Western Desert Nganampa Walytja Palyantjaku Tjutaku Aboriginal Corporation, better known as Purple House is an Indigenous owned and run non profit health service based in Alice Springs in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Aust ...

of Australia. It specialises in the provision of dialysis to

Indigenous Australians Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

in remote communities across the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia.

History

Purple House was formally established in 2003 by the Pintupi people of the Western Desert in response to a growing health and cultural crisis. A series of collaborative paintings were produced by senior

Pintupi The Pintupi are an Australian Aboriginal group who are part of the Western Desert cultural group and whose traditional land is in the area west of Lake Macdonald and Lake Mackay in Western Australia. These people moved (or were moved) into ...

artists, many of whom were represented by

Papunya Tula Papunya Tula, registered as Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, is an artist cooperative formed in 1972 in Papunya, Northern Territory, owned and operated by Aboriginal people from the Western Desert of Australia. The group is known for its innovative ...

. The paintings raised over $1 million dollars at an auction at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2000 which funded the established of Western Desert Nganampa Walytja Palyantjaku Tjutaku Aboriginal Corporation. Remote Indigenous Australians are up to twenty times more likely to experience end-stage

kidney failure Kidney failure, also known as end-stage kidney disease, is a medical condition in which the kidneys can no longer adequately filter waste products from the blood, functioning at less than 15% of normal levels. Kidney failure is classified as eit ...

than non-Indigenous people. Throughout the 1990s, increasing numbers of Aboriginal people were being forced to leave their traditional lands for end-stage renal failure. Many required dialysis which meant permanent relocation to regional centres such as Alice Springs or Darwin, away from country and family, and removing their ability to pass on important cultural knowledge to their communities. Purple House began dialysis services in a suburban house in Alice Springs, which was painted purple, inspiring its name Purple House. Its first remote dialysis clinic in Kintore opened in 2004. It now runs 18 other clinics in the NT, WA and SA and two mobile dialysis units called the Purple Truck. The organisation is supported through an innovative mix of philanthropic and self-generated funds, and Northern Territory and Commonwealth Government support. Three new clinics opened in 2019, including Purple House's first South Australia clinic. Purple House has expanded significantly to offer social, aged care and NDIS support, as well as running a social enterprise called Bush Balm, which draws in Indigenous knowledge systems around bush medicine. After years of lobbying, in 2018 it was announced that dialysis in very remote areas would be funded by Medicare.

Awards and recognitions

Purple House received an Indigenous Governance Award from Reconciliation Australia in 2016. It was named Telstra NT Business of the Year in 2018. Purple House CEO, Sarah Brown AM was recognised with an Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday 2020 Honours List “for significant service to community health, to remote area nursing, and to the Indigenous community”. In 2017 she was Hesta Australia’s Nurse of the Year and in 2018 made the AFR BOSS magazine’s ‘True Leaders’ list.

References

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External links

Purple House official website
Aboriginal organisations in the Northern Territory Health charities in Australia Organizations established in 2002 Medical and health organisations based in the Northern Territory Indigenous health organisations based in Australia