Tingari

The Tingari are the great ancestral company at the heart of Pintupi cosmology: elders of initiated manhood who, in the Tjukurrpa, journeyed over vast tracts of the Western Desert accompanied by novices whom they instructed in ritual and law. Their travels opened up the country, forming rock holes, dunes, soakages and ceremonial grounds, and at certain sites, such as Marawa west of Wilkinkarra, they passed beneath the earth to continue underground. Much of the imagery of Pintupi ceremony and of the Papunya Tula painting movement derives from Tingari song-cycles, whose full narratives remain restricted men's knowledge. In one of the principal accounts of the creation of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), a party of Tingari men set the country ablaze while hunting a kangaroo, the fierce fire scorching the land into the vast salt lake.

Domains

• law
• initiation
• country creation

Powers

• opens up and shapes the country
• instructs novices in law
• travels beneath the earth

Epithets

• Tingari — the ancestral companyFred R. Myers, Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self (1986) (primary)

Relations

• enemy: MaluIn the Wilkinkarra creation account a party of Tingari men set the country alight while hunting the kangaroo ancestor Malu.R. G. Kimber, 'The creation of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) in Pintupi/Kukatja Dreamings', Australian Aboriginal Studies (2005) (secondary)

Sources

• The Tingari are a body of ancestral men, accompanied by novices, whose Dreaming travels across the Western Desert created the physical and ceremonial landscape and instituted the law and initiation of the Pintupi and neighbouring peoples.: Fred R. Myers, Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place, and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines (Smithsonian, 1986) (primary)
• In the Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) Dreaming a group of Tingari men burning the country in search of a kangaroo is one of the recurrent accounts of the salt lake's creation.: R. G. Kimber, 'The creation of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) in Pintupi/Kukatja Dreamings', Australian Aboriginal Studies (2005) (secondary)