Otto Jungarrayi Sims

This Dreaming painting is about the Milky Way, those stars which shine up in the sky at night when we sleep. This story that I am telling is about my fathers in the Dreamtime who made the stars travel across the sky. They were of the Japaljarri-Jungarrayi section. They came from their country in the north and lived in one place. Unchanging, these stars created by the Dreaming did not turn into other sections. They were not made randomly, but by the Japaljarri-Jungarrayi Dreaming who created the Milky Way and carried stars and witi poles as he travelled. The Dreamtime people travelled and made camp in one place for some time. They conducted male initiation ceremonies. They took leafy branches from trees and bound them together into witi poles, using vines and creepers. These they used when they initiated young men, as we do today. I am only telling of that part of the Dreaming story which came from the north. This same Dreaming belongs to others. We all join up – Yarripilangu and Yarrungkanyi. It is a big Dreamtime story about the millions of stars which shine above us as we sleep. It is also about the land which is sacred because it was created by the Dreaming. Special places were made by the Dreaming, which fell down as a shooting star to earth. Thus the Dreaming came to be for people. It is our father which stretches across the sky above us as the Milky Way. This Dreaming stands there from the north. The Japaljarris and Jungarrayis in the Dreamtime travelled a long way from the north side and landed at Purrparlarla. The Dreamtime men, armed with their weapons, travelled through the sky and came down and landed at Purrparlarla. There was a big company travelling together and no one approached them. Some of the Japaljarris disappeared there, while the others kept going straight through by Purrparlarla. We were taught about these Dreamings by our grandfathers, fathers and elder brothers. They instructed us in the Warlpiri law and told us not to forget what we had been taught, told us how to hold on to our law and follow it the right way. I am npw telling the Dreaming of the Milky Way, of all those millions of stars up above us, as I was told it by our old men.