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Kungkarrangkalpa (Seven Sisters)

Kungkarrangkalpa (The Seven Sisters or Pleiades) is an important Tjukurrpa (Dreaming) story, known across many cultures and reflected in the stars. The Australian Aboriginal songline is one chapter of this vast, interconnected narrative, with each region holding its own understanding of the journey.

In the Ngaanyatjarra lands, the story tells of Wati Nyiru (the Magic Man), who fell in love with the sisters. But he was of the wrong skin group to marry them, and so the sisters fled across the country to escape his relentless pursuit. He used magic to try and deceive them, disguising himself as a kampurarrpa (bush tomato) or a Yirli (wild fig tree) to lure them in. But the sisters were wise to his tricks, outsmarting him again and again, choosing hunger over capture.

Frustrated, Nyiru made the eldest sister sick, hoping to slow them down, but the other sisters cared for her and helped her recover. He even managed to capture the youngest sister for a time, but with the help of her older siblings, she escaped. As he chased them across the land, Nyiru transformed into a Quandong tree, a Yirli tree, and even a carpet snake, spying on the sisters as they rested and dug for food. Eventually, the sisters took to the sky, becoming the constellation known as the Pleiades, with Nyiru following as Orion—forever chasing but never reaching them.

Angilyiya Mitchell is a custodian of the Seven Sisters Dreaming at Kuru Ala—a sacred women’s place in her mother’s country, south of Papulankutja (Blackstone). This painting depicts that site.

The sweeping lines in the artwork evoke the rolling sandhills of this country, mapping the journey of the sisters as they travelled across the land. The site remains deeply significant today, a place where the echoes of this ancient story still resonate.

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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