Nyaranbi, the Dingo ancestor

Nyaranbi is the Dingo ancestor of Lardil tradition on Mornington Island (Kunhanhaa) in the Gulf of Carpentaria. In the creative era of the Dreaming, Nyaranbi acted alongside the Rainbow Serpent Thuwathu as a law-giving totemic ancestor, establishing the customary laws, ceremonies, totemic affiliations, kinship arrangements and land- and sea-country story places that continue to govern Lardil conduct toward one another and toward their country.

Domains

• customary law
• kinship system
• totemism

Powers

• to lay down customary law and ceremony
• to institute the totemic and kinship order

Sources

• McKnight, David. People, Countries, and the Rainbow Serpent: Systems of Classification among the Lardil of Mornington Island. Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Memmott, Paul. Lardil Properties of Place: An Ethnological Study in Man-Environment Relations. PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 1979.