Wandjina
Cloud-and-rain creator-spirits of the Worora, Wunambal, and Ngarinyin language groups of the Kimberley region (northwestern Western Australia). Per canonical-Worora-Wunambal-Ngarinyin narrative, the Wandjina are the foundational creator-ancestors who emerged from sea and sky during the Dreaming, traveled across the Kimberley shaping the landscape and instituting the law, and at the end of their creator-work merged into the rock-walls of Kimberley shelters where their images continue to inhabit the rock as ongoing-present beings. The Wandjina rock-art iconographic style — large eyes, mouthless face, halo-headdress representing clouds, robes of clouds-and-lightning — is one of the most-distinctive Aboriginal Australian rock-art conventions and is globally recognized as a signature Australian-Indigenous visual-art style. The mouth-absence is canonically explained: if the Wandjina had mouths, rain would never stop falling. Wandjina-painted-rocks are ritually-renewed by community members through periodic painting-renewal ceremonies — the canonical-traditional renewal practice that maintains the rock-images as ongoing-present cultural artifacts. The Wandjina-class designation encompasses multiple specific named-Wandjina figures (Namarali, Wallangunda, and others) associated with specific Kimberley rock-shelters; the registry-entry treats Wandjina as a class-name rather than as singular-individual figure.
Domains
- rain
- creation
- fertility
- thunder and lightning
Powers
- must have their rock-images repainted to renew the rains and the world
- Brings the monsoon rains
- Looses lightning and thunderstorms
Epithets
- the Wandjina
Sources
- Worora-Wunambal-Ngarinyin community publications; Mowanjum Aboriginal Art and Culture Centre
- A. P. Elkin, "The Rainbow-Serpent Myth in North-West Australia" (1930) and subsequent ethnographic work
- Kimberley Wandjina rock-shelter sites; rock-art dating studies (Aubert et al., Bednarik) establishing pre-Holocene origins
- AIATSIS heritage record