Looking at the Nguwing Buurah

Deeply embedded in science and culture, First Nations understandings of the cosmos are sophisticated and complex. Developed over millennia this is a living system of knowledge.

Each community has information encoded in the nguwing (night) buurah (sky) — cultural knowledge systems that speak to the social and cultural environment, interwoven in complex tapestries where understandings of the universe appear as a cosmoscape.

In one way the nguwing buurah is a mirror of Country as it reflects the landscape, complete with rivers and forests. The sky is an inhabited world, one that is both tangible and intangible, full of ancestral beings. It is where Baiami the sky ancestor lives and many important cultural figures are located there.

In a practical sense the buurah is a library, an encyclopedia, seasonal calendar, map, almanac and clock. It also represents where things are — campsites, tribes, ancestral places — in other words a sky atlas and a big library.

Warrawal (the Milky Way) is seen differently by different mob. It can be seen as a river, sky camps of the ancestors with the haze, or smoke from the campfires.

Birrung (stars) hold story and can also represent important sites such as hand crafted badu (water) holes, mountains, or other natural features. Star maps, that overlay everything and everywhen, are coded to memory using song and ceremony. Birrung present directions of the muru (pathways) for travelling to ceremony or meeting places, identifying the badu holes along the way.

There are many layers in knowledge — everything is connected, everything intertwined. The constellation known as the Emu in the Sky provides a glimpse to this knowledge.