The Seven Sisters (Minyipuru, Kungkarangkalpa)

A songline across many Countries

The Seven Sisters travel across the Western and Central Deserts, through the Countries of the Martu (who call them Minyipuru), the Ngaanyatjarra, and the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (who call them Kungkarangkalpa), pursued by a man who desires one or all of them. Their journey forms songlines that cross hundreds of kilometres of what are now Western Australia, South Australia, and the Northern Territory, and the places where they camped, rested, and escaped are marked in the land.

Shared through Songlines

The custodians of these songlines worked with the National Museum of Australia to share parts of the story publicly in the exhibition Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters (2017), through paintings, weavings, song, dance, and digital media, deciding themselves what could be shown. Aṉangu senior women artists quoted by the museum describe themselves as big sisters to the young women, with a duty, as in the Seven Sisters story, to teach and protect them.

In the sky

The sisters rise into the sky as the Pleiades. Stories of sisters and the Pleiades are found in many Aboriginal traditions beyond the deserts as well, but they are told in their own ways by their own peoples.

What is not here

Parts of the Seven Sisters story are women's knowledge, or are restricted in other ways, and are not public. This entry keeps to the outline that the custodians chose to share.