Min Tuktaiyan (the Black Snake Woman)

Min Tuktaiyan, the Black Snake Woman, is a serpent ancestress of the Wik-Mungkan of western Cape York, the female counterpart in a paired myth recorded by Ursula McConnel from the narrator Lampas, in which she appears with the White Snake Man Mun U.ka. She stands among the pulwaiya, the ancestral totemic beings whose stories anchor clan cult and country, and is distinct from Taipan the rainbow-snake.

Domains

• snakes

Powers

• to multiply its species at the totemic increase-site

Epithets

• pulwaiya

Relations

• companion: Mun U.ka (the White Snake Man)

Sources

• McConnel, Ursula H. Myths of the Munkan. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1957.
• South Australian Museum, AA 191 Ursula Hope McConnel Collection, Series AA 191/16 'Texts, mainly in Wik-Mungkan', item AA 191/16/17, 'Myth of the White Snake Man Mun U.ka and the Black Snake Woman Min Tuktaiyan', recorded from Lampas.