Liru

Pitjantjatjara · deity · Pitjantjatjara traditional religion; continuing · deity

Liru is the venomous-snake ancestral being of the Uluru Tjukurpa, the antagonist of Kuniya. A war party of Liru men travelled from the west and, on reaching the rock, fell upon and killed the young Kuniya nephew. The marks of their advance are read in the pocked and scalloped stone of Uluru's south-western face, where their spears and shields are said to have struck; a rounded boulder near the base is identified as a Liru shield. When Kuniya took her revenge, one Liru warrior was struck dead at the Mutitjulu waterhole. Sources sometimes render Liru collectively as the Liru people and sometimes single out the slain warrior Wati Liru; the being embodies the poisonous king-brown and mulga snakes of the desert and stands as the archetypal aggressor in the paired snake mythology of Ayers Rock.

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