Written by Carmelo Amalfi Wednesday, 18 November 2009 14:04
THE night sky exists as a distinct ‘Skyworld’ that obeys the same laws as those on earth, according to Indigenous Australians.
Its existence is echoed in the words of Yamaji artist David Prior, whose display Celebrations depicts the moment when land and sky worlds meet.
South Australian Museum researcher Dr Philip Clarke has found in many parts of the country where the impact of European settlement was greatest, the accounts of Indigenous Australian astronomical beliefs were based mostly on early 19th century sources.
Unfortunately, this information was unreliable and compiled by observers unfamiliar with indigenous southern sky relationships.
The existence of the heavens as an image of the terrestrial landscape was common.
In central Australia, Dr Clarke notes ‘tribal’ and linguistic boundaries are reflected in a cosmic landscape where the ancestors of living people dwell - linking astronomical objects to the Indigenous Australian kinship system.
“The Skyworld was perceived as a place where great knowledge could be attained,” he says.
“Aboriginal 'doctors' and 'sorcerers' in the early years of European settlement frequently claimed to have visited the Skyworld, often by climbing a tree or a large hill.”
The skyworld is no more or less sacred than the earth.
According to Dr Clarke’s ethno-astronomy studies, the Milky Way dominates the sky as a great river filled with fish and lily “sky people”, its banks lined by their ancestors’ fires.
The Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, collected roots and vegetables that grow around it.
Gaps in the constellations were thought to harbour waterholes, lagoons and billabongs where dangerous ‘beings’, or demons, dwelled.
According to Albert Calvert’s ‘The Aborigines of Western Australia’, 1894, “Mullion” is a wicked being who lives in a big tree and seizes black fellows to eat in the Milky Way.
People of the Warburton Ranges in WA saw a long line of dark patches along the Milky Way, between Alpha Centauri and Alpha Cygnu, as a great totem board made by two ancestral heroes, the Wati Kutjara, while accompanying the Seven Sisters.
Around Yirrkala in the Northern Territory, people tell of the legend of two brothers who drowned while canoeing, their bodies representing the two dark patches in the Milky Way in the constellations of Serpens and Sagittarius.
The canoe is a line of four stars near Antares.
Colour, too, was important. The Aranda people of central Australia distinguish red stars from white, blue and yellow stars.
In eastern NSW, the red star Aldebaran represents the story of a man who stole another man’s wife and hid in a tree that the angry husband set fire to. The flames carried the adulterer into the sky where he still burns red.
Studies of Indigenous astronomy offer great insights into important ceremonial cycles and mythological beliefs of the Indigenous Australian people.
According to Think.com, which is part of ThinkQuest, a learning platform for teachers and students, indigenous astronomy is, ‘like the stained glass windows of medieval cathedrals’. David Prior ‘s Celebrations is a window to the Skyworld.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
