Sculptor Keith Wikmunea has won the prestigious $100,000 Telstra Art Award and he already knows where the prizemoney is going.
"I'm going to buy myself a boat and a car and take my family back to my country camping and fishing," he said.
The Thu’ Apalech artist from Aurukun in far north Queensland spent "ages" creating the sculpture of white cockatoos and galahs in a tree, which stands just under three metres tall with a carved dog at its base.
It was an exemplary winning work executed by a master carver, the judges said.
"I love carving and it makes me really proud that I won the award, I made my family really proud," Wikmunea said.
His artwork is titled Ku’, Theewith & Kalampang: The White Cockatoo, Galah and the wandering Dog, and it represents the artist's identity and some of his family's totems.
The milkwood tree, known as yuk thanchal in the artist's first language of Wik-Mungkan, is covered with the ceremonial dot painting of Western Cape York, with the same ochre used in traditional ceremonies.
Wikmunea's ancestors had been using the tree to create artefacts since the beginning of time, he said.
It is the 40th anniversary of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, Australia's longest-running and most prestigious awards for Indigenous art.
This year the event attracted 246 entries, with 63 finalists on display at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin.
As for the next generation of Indigenous artists, the Telstra Emerging Artist Award went to Dhalmula Burarrwaŋa for her painting of lost items on five panels of stringybark titled wanha, dhika, nhawi?
She explained in her statement the phrase is Yolŋu slang: "This is what you mutter to yourself when you are looking for that whatchamacallit that was somewhere, maybe here or was it there?"
The Multimedia Award went to Torres Strait Islander video artist Jimmy John Thaiday for the second year running, with a message about sharing from a community dependent on the sea.
"If we come to the big smoke it's very hard to reach out to family," he told AAP.
"If you're on an island, family is very important, we can share our lifestyle and hopefully do the right thing for climate change."
The painting prize went to Julie Nangala Robertson, one of five daughters of well-known artist, the late Dorothy Napangardi.
The prize for bark painting went to Kuninjku artist Owen Yalandja, the work on paper award to Brenda L Croft and the 3D art award to Anne Nginyangka Thompson.
The Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards are on display at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin until February.
AAP travelled with the assistance of MAGNT.
