Mimi

Also Known As: also Mimih
Region/Culture: Oceania (Western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia)
Mythos: Aboriginal Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: Tall, needle-thin spirit beings who taught the first people to hunt, butcher, cook, paint, sing and dance, and who are credited with the oldest fine paintings on the escarpment walls.
Role in Mythos: The first inhabitants of the Arnhem Land stone country, living a whole society inside the rock itself, parallel to the life of the people.
Relation to Humans: Usually shy and harmless, they keep to their crevices and slip out of sight at the first sign of a person, yet the stories also make them capable of luring, stealing away, and killing the careless. They are teachers as much as hazards, the source of nearly every practical skill the living rely on in that country.

On a still afternoon in the sandstone country of western Arnhem Land, when not a blade of spear-grass moves and the heat sits heavy on the rock, something long and thin is said to unfold from a crack in the cliff. It has been waiting for weather like this. A Mimi is so slight that an ordinary breeze could break it, so it chooses its moment, stepping out of the shadow of the escarpment on legs like reeds and testing the air before it trusts itself to the open.

They belong to the Kunwinjku and their neighbours, the peoples of the rocky escarpment country whose lives are bound to these shelters and galleries. In their accounts the Mimi are not visitors to the land but its first tenants, older than the human story here, already living in the stone when the ancestors arrived. And they live in it still, not merely among the rocks but inside them, keeping a society that mirrors the one outside, with camps and families, hunting and quarrels, songs and ceremonies of their own. Everything that makes a person a person in this country, the Mimi are said to have there too.

Their bodies are the first thing anyone describes, because their bodies are the whole of their predicament. A Mimi stands taller than a man and is drawn out thin as a stalk, arms and legs stretched to a length that no living frame could carry. There is almost nothing to them. The neck is the weakest point, and the tradition is blunt about the danger: caught in a strong wind, a Mimi can have its neck broken, or be picked up and blown away like a dry husk. So they move nervously, quick and watchful, and they will not come out when the air is unsettled. Stillness is their weather.

Before people knew how to do anything here, the Mimi knew, and they taught it. The old red-ochre figures high on the shelter walls, the running, dancing, spear-throwing shapes painted with a line so fine and so sure that people said no ordinary hand could have laid it down, are held to be the Mimi’s own work, or the record of what the Mimi showed. From them the first people learned to track and spear the kangaroo, to open and butcher the carcass, to turn the meat over a fire so it cooked through. They learned to grind ochre and paint, to sing the right songs, to dance, to run a ceremony in its proper order. The skills that let a family survive a dry season and the skills that let a people keep its law came from the same slender teachers.

Picture one of them at work in the cool dark of a gallery, crouched over a low fire with a young man beside him, showing him how to lay the kangaroo so the heat reaches the deep meat, the smoke curling up into the ochre figures already on the ceiling. That is the Mimi as friend, patient and exact, handing over the country’s knowledge the way an elder does.

The other face is the one told to keep children close to camp. A hunter alone at dusk, far from the fires, sees a thin shape ahead of him that seems to want him to follow. He follows. It leads him to a blank rock face, breathes on the stone until a crack opens in it, and draws him through into the dark, and the rock closes behind them both. He is not seen again. Even the harmless version of the encounter ends the same way for the Mimi: surprised in the open, it bolts for the cliff, blows a gap in the stone, slips through, and the wall seals shut before you have finished blinking.

Their gifts follow from what they are. They know this country as its oldest residents, every waterhole and yam bed and game trail, and they hold the arts that people count as the foundation of civilised life here. They can open and close the living rock and vanish into it, which makes them nearly impossible to catch and nearly impossible to see. They do not age in any way the stories bother to track, and the paintings they left have outlasted a great many human generations.

Set against all that is a fragility close to comedy if it were not also lethal. A strong wind can kill them. They cannot bear the moving air that people walk through without a thought, they startle at almost nothing, and their whole existence is arranged around not being seen and not being touched. Their power over the country is total and their hold on their own bodies is almost none. The living still keep them near without ever meeting them, in the bark paintings and the tall carved wooden figures that Kunwinjku artists make today, thin men and women stepping and hunting and dancing, the first painters of the escarpment turned back into paint.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Mimi spirits?

The Mimi, also spelled Mimih, are tall, extremely thin spirit beings from the folklore of the Aboriginal peoples of western Arnhem Land in northern Australia. They are regarded as the first inhabitants of the sandstone escarpment country, who lived there before humans arrived and who taught the first people how to hunt, cook, paint, sing, and perform ceremony.

Where do the Mimi spirits live?

The Mimi live inside the rock of the western Arnhem Land escarpment, sheltering in cracks, crevices, and fissures in the sandstone. Because their bodies are so thin and light that a strong wind could break them, they stay hidden in the stone and emerge only when the air is completely still.

What did the Mimi teach Aboriginal people?

According to the Kunwinjku and neighbouring peoples, the Mimi taught the first humans nearly every skill needed to survive and live properly in the country. This included how to hunt and spear kangaroo, how to butcher and cook meat, and how to paint, sing, dance, and carry out ceremonies.

Are the Mimi spirits dangerous?

The Mimi are usually described as shy and harmless, avoiding humans and slipping into the rock when approached. However, the stories also attribute mischievous and dangerous behaviour to them, saying they can lure lone or careless people, kidnap them into the rock, and even kill them.

Did the Mimi make the rock art of Arnhem Land?

In Aboriginal tradition the oldest and finest rock paintings in the Arnhem Land escarpment, the slender running and dancing figures now often called Dynamic Figures, are credited to the Mimi. The lines were considered too fine and skilful for ordinary human hands, so people held that the Mimi either painted them or taught the first people to paint.