The Seven Sisters
Also known as: Minyipuru (Martu), Kungkarangkalpa (Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara), the Pleiades
Mythological Narrative
In the Tjukurpa of the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara, the sisters are called Kungkarangkalpa. In the Dreaming a man named Wati Nyiru desired them, but under kinship law he stood in the wrong relation to them and could not marry. Nyiru is a shapeshifter: he lay in wait along their route as a rock, a tree, or tempting food, and again and again the sisters saw through the disguise and fled, their flight leaving waterholes, caves, and dunes across the desert. The rock shelter of Walinynga (Cave Hill) in northern South Australia holds famous public paintings of the pursuit. Cornered at last at the edge of the sea, the sisters leapt into the sky and became the Pleiades; Nyiru followed and became bright stars of Orion, still trailing them westward through the winter night.
Versions of the narrative run along the songline across language boundaries: the Martu of Western Australia call the sisters Minyipuru, and Gamilaraay and neighbouring peoples of the south-east tell of the Meamei sisters and the coming of frost. Sky and story lock together — the pre-dawn rising of the Pleiades keys seasonal rules in each region. Astronomers often cite the tradition when discussing the depth of Australian oral astronomy: like the Greeks, and independently of them, desert peoples read the same cluster as sisters pursued.
In 2017 the National Museum of Australia mounted Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters, an exhibition led by desert elders that retraced the chase through a replica rock shelter, monumental acrylic paintings, and immersive media — the largest public telling to date, its catalogue now the standard open reference.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## 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.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding The Seven Sisters.
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