Yapa - Walking Barefoot with Jangala

A full colour, mini-memoir filled with 80 photos that bring this outback Australian journey to life.

Brent Ovalsen inadvertently found himself seeking redemption in the Australian outback whilst living with the Warlpiri people, a tribe who are still remote enough to be able to stay fully connected to their land and the ancestral beings via ceremonies of song, dance and art. 

In 1996, on what will become a journey of radical spiritual seeking, Brent takes the reader to Australia's Tanami Desert, the small community of Lajamanu, some 600km from the nearest town. Brent Ovalsen walked barefoot with tribal elder A. 'Kuminjayi' Jangala who opened Brent's heart, causing him to choose to be true to himself. 

Whilst this book is Brent's personal spiritual journey, he hopes to spotlight the often unseen or hidden in plain sight aspect of Australian Indigenous people - with their profound wisdom, pure love and beauty that emanates freely to all who drop their worldly preconceptions. 

Then later, when Brent hands himself in for a five year unsolved crime, he then uses his spiritual knowledge to seek even further and discover more fully how to access the divine within. As 5,533 days of prison go by, Brent facilitates many inmates to shift their attitudes and in many cases they transform completely.

And throughout his prison journey and spiritual seeking, Brent shows us how tribal elder A. 'Kuminjayi' Jangala taught him that distance is a facade and the interconnectedness of all beings may be profoundly accessed anywhere and anytime.

Brent's journey is an immaculate example of how when one surrenders fully, embracing forgiveness, kindness and love, that the universe conspires at all times to intervene, utilising any religion, culture, person, place or circumstance to work all things together for good.