Kungkarangkalpa

Kungkarangkalpa, the Seven Sisters, are a company of ancestral women who travelled the Western Desert while pursued by the lustful man Wati Nyiru. Their long flight lays down waterholes, food places and women's ceremony along a songline that crosses Pintupi country and the great salt lake Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay). Unable to shake their pursuer, the sisters finally launch themselves from a hilltop into the sky and become the seven stars of the Pleiades, with Nyiru following as Orion. The story is one of the most widely shared in the desert: the sisters are known as Kungkarangkalpa among Pitjantjatjara speakers, as the Napaljarri-warnu among the Warlpiri, and as the Minyipuru among the Martu to the west.

Domains

• celestial
• womens law

Powers

• escapes by ascending to the sky
• carries women's law across country

Epithets

• Kungkarangkalpa — the Seven SistersNapaljarri and Cataldi, Warlpiri Dreamings and Histories (1994) (secondary)

Relations

• enemy: Wati NyiruThey flee the pursuit of Wati Nyiru across the desert and into the night sky.R. M. and C. H. Berndt, The Speaking Land (1989) (secondary)

Sources

• Kungkarangkalpa are the seven ancestral sisters who flee the pursuit of Wati Nyiru and ascend to become the Pleiades, a songline shared across Pintupi, Pitjantjatjara and Warlpiri country and passing through Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay).: Napaljarri and Cataldi, Warlpiri Dreamings and Histories (HarperCollins, 1994) (secondary)
• In Pitjantjatjara the sisters are Kungkarangkalpa; in Warlpiri they are the Napaljarri-warnu; among the Martu they are the Minyipuru.: R. M. and C. H. Berndt, The Speaking Land: Myth and Story in Aboriginal Australia (1989) (secondary)