Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters

This is the National Museum of Australia's own exhibition resource on the Seven Sisters Dreaming, the Kungkarangkalpa songline, produced together with the Anangu, Ngaanyatjarra and Yankunytjatjara custodians whose story it is. Its value is exactly that collaborative custodianship, the narrative is presented in the words and with the direct involvement of the communities who hold it, rather than being reconstructed at a distance by an outside interpreter. Its limit follows from the same fact, it is a presentation of the tradition's own account for a general museum audience rather than an independent academic analysis, so where the resource itself draws a comparison, for instance to a Western astronomical reading of the same stars, that comparison should be attributed to the source and not extended further than the source itself goes.