Nadulmi (the kangaroo ancestral being)
Kunwinjku · deity · Kunwinjku traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Nadulmi is a creation-period ancestral being of the Kunwinjku of western Arnhem Land, identified with the great kangaroo and specifically with the black wallaroo (barrk) of the sandstone escarpment. He is remembered above all as the senior owner and leader of the Wubarr, one of the region's major ceremonies, in which men perform dances modelled on the leaping and mating behaviour of kangaroos to renew the fertility of the country. He is a recurrent subject in western Arnhem Land bark and rock painting, where his macropod form carries the ceremonial designs proper to the Wubarr.
Domains
- macropod totem
- wubarr ceremony
Powers
- to lead the Wubarr ceremony
- to take the form of the kangaroo
Relations
- companion: Namanjwarre (the Mardayin crocodile ancestor)Nadulmi and the crocodile ancestor Namanjwarre are principal ancestral beings of the interlinked Wubarr and Mardayin ceremonial cycle of western Arnhem Land and appear together in its painted narrative.Sandra Le Brun Holmes, Yirawala: Painter of the Dreaming (Sydney: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992). (secondary)
Sources
- Nadulmi is the Kunwinjku kangaroo (black wallaroo) ancestral being and the senior leader of the Wubarr ceremony.: Luke Taylor, Seeing the Inside: Bark Painting in Western Arnhem Land (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). (secondary); Sandra Le Brun Holmes, Yirawala: Painter of the Dreaming (Sydney: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992). (secondary)