Malu

Malu, the red kangaroo, is one of the principal totemic ancestors of Pintupi country. His Dreaming tracks cross the desert as he feeds, rests and flees, marking named sites along the way, and the related Malu Kutjarra, or Two Kangaroo Dreaming, was among the most important subjects taken up by Pintupi men in the Papunya Tula painting movement of the 1980s. In one of the recurrent accounts of the making of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), it is Malu whom a party of Tingari men pursue, setting the country ablaze in the hunt and scorching the land into the great salt lake.

Domains

• game animals
• hunting

Powers

• traverses and marks hunting country

Epithets

• Malu

Relations

• enemy: Tingari

Sources

• Vivien Johnson, Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists (IAD Press, 2008)
• R. G. Kimber, 'The creation of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) in Pintupi/Kukatja Dreamings', Australian Aboriginal Studies (2005)