European contact came late to this part of Australia. While the British colonized South Australia from 1836, the Anangu of the western deserts remained largely undisturbed for decades longer, encountering only occasional European explorers crossing their country. In 1921, as white settlement began to press into the region, the South Australian government proclaimed the North-West Aboriginal Reserve -- a vast protected area that covered most of what would become the APY Lands, though the eastern portions were handed to European pastoralists. In 1937, the Presbyterian Church, led by Charles Duguid, established the Ernabella Mission at the place now called Pukatja. By the 1950s, many Anangu lived at the mission or in camps on surrounding pastoral leases, working as stockhands and laborers. The communities of Amata and Kaltjiti were established by the church in 1961 to ease overcrowding at Ernabella.

The transformation came in 1981 when the South Australian Parliament, under Premier David Tonkin, passed the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Land Rights Act. The legislation was groundbreaking: it recognized the traditional ownership of the Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, and Ngaanyatjarra peoples over their ancestral lands, and established an elected executive board to govern the area, reporting to the Premier of South Australia. The APY became one of Australia's largest and most significant Indigenous local government areas, with its administrative center at Umuwa. The Lands maintain their own time zone -- Australian Central Standard Time year-round, aligning with Darwin rather than Adelaide, a reflection of the stronger practical ties northward to the Territory than southward to the state capital.

The APY Lands contain several communities scattered across the desert. Pukatja, the former Ernabella Mission, is the largest with roughly 520 residents. Amata has about 390. Indulkana, established in 1968 as a government welfare base, is home to around 340 people. Mimili, Kaltjiti, and Pipalyatjara round out the main settlements. According to the 2021 census, 88.5 percent of residents are Indigenous Australians. The most commonly spoken language is Pitjantjatjara, used by 64 percent of the population, followed by Yankunytjatjara at 12 percent. English is a second or third language for most residents. The median age is 28. These are small, close-knit communities facing the compounding difficulties of remoteness: limited infrastructure, chronic underfunding, and the social challenges that colonial dispossession and its aftermath have created across Indigenous Australia.

The APY Lands have produced one of Australia's most vibrant Indigenous art movements. Art centers operate across the communities -- Tjala Arts at Amata, Ernabella Arts at Pukatja, Kaltjiti Arts, Iwantja Arts at Indulkana, Mimili Maku Arts, and Tjungu Palya at Nyapari. These centers provide employment, preserve cultural knowledge, and generate income for communities with few other economic opportunities. The work is serious and internationally recognized: in 2019, seventeen APY artists were finalists in the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The APY Art Centre Collective operates a gallery in Adelaide. Tjanpi Desert Weavers create sculptural works from desert grasses and found materials. The Ara Irititja project, launched in 1994, works to identify, digitize, and preserve historical materials about the Anangu, creating an electronic archive of a culture that has been transmitted orally for millennia.

Land rights did not solve the underlying problems of poverty, health inequality, and social disruption that decades of colonization had created. A 2004 parliamentary inquiry found that the 1981 Act had not addressed entrenched socioeconomic disadvantage, and recommended reforms including a permanent police presence to combat petrol sniffing and family violence. The Musgrave Block beneath the Lands holds billions of dollars in potential mineral and petroleum deposits, but the Anangu have been wary of mining, concerned about impacts on sacred sites and the environment. The opal-mining town of Mintabie, which operated under separate governance within the Lands, was closed in 2019 after a review found widespread non-compliance with regulations. The APY Lands remain a place where ancient culture and contemporary governance struggle to coexist with the legacies of dispossession -- and where the people who have lived on this land the longest continue to assert their right to determine its future.