Wagyl

Rainbow Serpent figure of the Noongar (Nyungar) language group of southwestern Australia; creator of rivers, waterways, and significant landscape-features of southwestern Western Australia (notably the Swan and Canning rivers in Whadjuk Noongar Country / modern Perth region). Per canonical-Noongar narrative, traveled across the southwestern landscape carving riverbeds and water-channels with its body, depositing salt at salt-lakes, and establishing law-and-Country relationships. Canonically "alive in the rivers" rather than past-and-completed — continues to inhabit the water-features it created. The pan-Aboriginal Australian Rainbow Serpent figure is one of the most-widely-attested Dreaming-creator types, with regional-variant names: Wagyl (Noongar SW Australia), Yurlungur (Yolngu Arnhem Land), Ngalyod (Kunwinjku Arnhem Land), Goorialla (Lardil-Gunwingku), Almudj (Gagudju), and many others. The 2006 Single Noongar Native Title Claim — one of the most-significant Australian Aboriginal-Native-Title legal decisions — explicitly anchored Noongar legal-traditional sovereignty in continuous Wagyl-cultural-religious practice across the southwestern Country, establishing the figure as legally-foundational for contemporary Noongar political-cultural identity.

Domains

• creation
• fresh water
• rivers

Powers

• is the Noongar Rainbow Serpent, creator and keeper of the fresh waters
• Carves rivers as its body moves over land
• Keeps and guards the fresh waters

Epithets

• the Waugal

Sources

• SWALSC (South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council) publications
• Whadjuk Noongar tradition; AIATSIS heritage record
• Daisy Bates, The Passing of the Aborigines (1938)
• Single Noongar Native Title Claim (2006 Federal Court decision)