the meaning of the event was understood in many different ways. agencies serving aboriginals thought the group's discovery would help them in the debate about indigenous land rights. fred myers, an anthropologist who was invited to kiwirrkurra to study the new group, argues that the event became a part of the pintupi's struggle to get back their autonomy, which they had lost when they first came out of the desert to settle at papunya. he argues that their main goal was to maintain the new people's ability to govern their own lives.