The story

Told as it is shared

Minyma Inmaku — the seven sisters — were travelling a vast arc of desert country, singing the plants and rocks into being as they went. Behind them came Watiwati — Warlpiri: man Nyiru, an old man with an old man's desires, who wanted one of the sisters for himself and changed shape to trick them: a quandong tree heavy with fruit; a snake at the waterhole; a wind at their backs.

The sisters were not fooled — or not always. They escaped by fire, by flight and by wit, time after time, until at last they rose off the earth altogether, climbing into the night sky, where they still run: the seven stars the Greeks called the Pleiades. Watiwati — Warlpiri: man Nyiru follows them still — a little behind, forever.

The chase they left behind is one of the longest songlines on Earth: a chain of rocks, springs and sandhills across the Western Desert, each holding a verse of the sisters' escape.

Country & context

The land that holds it

The songline runs through the country of the Anangu — the APY lands and the Western Desert — and beyond, joined to sister stories of the same stars among nations across the continent. The sky's seven women are known from the desert to the sea; every country adds a verse.

Art & memory

Painted, woven, sung

The sisters are among the most painted subjects in contemporary desert art — and in 2017 the National Museum of Australia's landmark exhibition Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters brought the story to the world, curated with Anangu custodians alongside the paintings of the APY art centres.

Parts of the story are not for the public — the sisters' law is guarded by the people who hold it, and the public versions are, by design, only the beginning.