Wawalag

The Wawalag sisters, also written as Wauwaluk Wawilak Waggilak, Wagilag, or Wawalik, are ancestral creator beings whose story is part of widespread sacred rituals in the Aboriginal culture from Arnhem land, Northern Territory, Australia.

The story takes place in Dreamtime, a period of time in Aboriginal belief where ancestral beings created the land as well as the social and linguistic structures in it. The sisters are said to have helped draw linguistic and social differences amongst the clans in Arnhem Land, but the ceremonies associated with their stories create cultural unity.

According to the story, the sisters were travelling to the Arafura Sea, but had to stop as the elder sister was about to have a baby and needed to rest. Later on, the elder sister goes in the river to bathe with her child and the smell of afterbirth blood awakens Yulunggur, the Rainbow Serpent, who then comes out of its waterhole and swallows both sisters and the baby.

An understanding of a common narrative was developed through field-research by archaeologists such as Catherine Berndt, Lloyd Warner, and Ronald Berndt during the mid-1990s. Since then there has been an increase in the representation of the story through Aboriginal artwork that attempts to show the complexity of the story, and how it cannot be limited to the western idea of chronological storytelling.