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 — the KangarooVivien Johnson, Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists (2008) (secondary)

Relations

• enemy: TingariMalu is the kangaroo hunted by the fire-lighting Tingari men in the Wilkinkarra creation Dreaming.R. G. Kimber, 'The creation of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) in Pintupi/Kukatja Dreamings', Australian Aboriginal Studies (2005) (secondary)

Sources

• Malu, the red kangaroo, is a major totemic ancestor of Pintupi country whose Dreaming tracks and the Malu Kutjarra (Two Kangaroo) Dreaming are central subjects of Pintupi men's ceremony and painting.: Vivien Johnson, Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists (IAD Press, 2008) (secondary)
• In the Wilkinkarra Dreaming the kangaroo pursued by the Tingari hunters is the occasion of the bushfire that formed Lake Mackay.: R. G. Kimber, 'The creation of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) in Pintupi/Kukatja Dreamings', Australian Aboriginal Studies (2005) (secondary)