Wati Nyiru

Wati Nyiru is the lustful ancestral hunter whose desire for the Seven Sisters drives one of the great songlines of the Western Desert. Refused as a husband because he stands in a wrong marriage relation to them, he pursues the women relentlessly across the desert, using shape-changing sorcery to turn quandong trees, honey-ants and other things into lures, and at times taking the form of the very foods the sisters seek. The sisters escape him again and again until, exhausted, they leap into the sky to become the Pleiades, while Nyiru follows as the stars of Orion, forever chasing but never overtaking them. Sources across the region name the pursuer variously as Nyiru, Njiru or, among the Martu to the west, Yurla.

Domains

• desire pursuit
• celestial

Powers

• pursues the Seven Sisters
• works love-sorcery

Epithets

• Wati Nyiru — the man NyiruScott Cane, Pila Nguru: The Spinifex People (2002) (secondary)

Relations

• enemy: KungkarangkalpaHe relentlessly pursues the Seven Sisters, who flee him across land and sky.R. M. and C. H. Berndt, The Speaking Land (1989) (secondary)

Sources

• Wati Nyiru is the lustful ancestral man who pursues the Seven Sisters (Kungkarangkalpa) across the Western Desert and into the sky, where he becomes associated with Orion tracking the Pleiades.: R. M. and C. H. Berndt, The Speaking Land: Myth and Story in Aboriginal Australia (Penguin, 1989) (secondary)
• In Pitjantjatjara and neighbouring Western Desert traditions the pursuer of Kungkarangkalpa is named Wati Nyiru; among the Martu he is Yurla.: Scott Cane, Pila Nguru: The Spinifex People (2002) (secondary)