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Kungkarrangkalpa (Seven Sisters)

In this painting, Angilyiya is focusing on the man — these are his eyes staring at you.

‘Kungkarrangkalpa’ (The Seven Sisters or Pleiades) is significant Tjukurrpa (Dreamtime). Its origins may be familiar to you in astronomy, through its connection to Wati Nyiru (Magic Man or Orion). The roots of this dreaming stretch across many Indigenous cultures around the world. The Australian Aboriginal songline is just one part of this larger dreaming that can be traced globally. For the ladies of the Ngaanyatjarra Lands, this story carries a particular chapter — one tied deeply to their understanding of country and the journey of the sisters. The different versions of this story depend on where you live and the importance of local Tjukurrpa places.

Nyiru fell in love with the sisters but was the wrong skin group to marry them. Still, he pursued them relentlessly. The sisters travel across the land to escape Nyiru’s unwanted attentions, always just out of reach. Their path can still be read in the land today — rocks, caves, and waterholes that carry this memory. As Nyiru is chasing the sisters he tries to catch them by using magic to turn into the most tempting kampurarrpa (bush tomato) and the most beautiful Yirli (wild fig tree), for them to eat and camp under. However, the sisters are knowledgeable of his magic and too clever for Nyiru, who they outwit again and again. They go hungry and run through the night rather than be caught by him. As the journey continues, Nyiru gets so frustrated at the wit of the sisters that he uses his magic to make the oldest sister sick to try and get closer to her. The other sisters rescue the big sister and nurse her back to health. It is said he also captures the youngest sister, but with the help of the oldest sister, she escapes back to her sisters who are waiting for her. Eventually, the sisters fly into the sky to escape Nyiru, forming the constellation. Nyiru, heartbroken and longing, used his magic to follow them — and now chases them forever across the sky.

This painting maps the site of Kuru Ala — meaning “two eyes”, a women’s site in Angilyiya’s mother’s country south of Papulankutja (Blackstone). Here, Wati Nyiru was spying on the women, watching them from the shadows of the cave — disguised as a quandong tree, a fig tree, then a snake — as they camped and dug for food.

Categories: Papulankutja Artists

Name: Angilyiya Tjapiti Mitchell

Language: Pitjantjatjara

Community: Papulankutja (Blackstone)

Biography:

Angilyiya was born near to Blackstone Ranges in Emu Country near Kunmarnarra Bore. There is important men's Dreaming in this country which is a traditional law area. She is a strong Law woman with wonderful bush skills, holding a wealth of traditional knowledge and capacity to live on this land. Angilyiya is the senior caretaker for important woman's dreaming places, linked to the Seven Sisters story.

Angilyiya’s father had four wives and her mother was the third. As a result she has a number of siblings and she shares the same father as Anawari Inpiti Mitchell. 

She created her first painting in 1994 and has been consistently active as an artist since and has also made limited edition prints. She is energetic and takes an interest in many things and has turned her hand to wood carving to make punu (small wood sculptures) and wira (bowls) and making bush medicines. She sources camel fat from the contractors who manage the feral camel population to use in bush medicine, boiling it up in water. 

She is very active in teaching and mentoring in language, culture and heritage. She is frequently called upon by the local Land Management team to come on trips and ‘talk for rockholes’ because of her knowledge of country/sites and ability to teach about ethnobotany and share Tjukurrpa (ancestral creation) stories. She says she is the ‘only one left to teach young people’.

She has also been a keen member of NPY Women’s Council and of Tjanpi Desert Weavers (TDW) making sculptural objects such as baskets and animal figures out of natural fibre, tjanpi (local grasses), raffia and wool.

Angiliyiya has been commissioned to contribute to major projects including creating a grass Toyota that won first prize in the 2005 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art (NATSIA) Awards. It was a collective work created by 18 women from Papulankutja/Blackstone (WA) and was acquired by the Museum and Art Gallery NT as part of their permanent collection. This was the first time a contemporary fibre art piece took the major prize in the history of this prestigious award.

Angilyiya was also a part of the Seven Sisters Songline creating a tjanpi female sculptural figure – one of the Seven Sisters of the Tjukurrpa - for the extraordinary multi-faceted National Museum of Australia (NMA) Songlines exhibition that was on display at the NMA in Canberra from 2017 to 2018. The sculptures can see online as actual objects and have also been digitised as characters in a video. See more here https://songlines.nma.gov.au/tjanpi

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