Kalaya

Pintupi · numen · Pintupi traditional religion; continuing · numen

Kalaya, the emu, is an ancestral being of Pintupi and neighbouring Western Desert country. The Kalaya Tjukurrpa, an Emu Dreaming running through the country west of Kintore, follows the great bird as it walks the landscape feeding and searching for water, its path and resting places fixed as named sites. As across much of Aboriginal Australia, the emu ancestor is also linked to the sky, its form traced in the dark dust lanes of the Milky Way rather than in stars. The Dreaming remains a subject of Pintupi and Luritja women's and men's painting.

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