Wati-kutjara

Also Known As: also Wati Kutjarra, Wadi Gudjara; Western Desert Language, literally “two men”; named in older reference works as Kurukadi, the white goanna, and Mumba, the black goanna
Region/Culture: Oceania
Mythos: Aboriginal Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Two ancestral goanna-men who name and call into being the animals, plants and landforms they pass, carry powerful magic, and can take the form of wind when threatened.
Role in Mythos: They walk one of the longest songlines in the Western Desert, bringing ritual and sacred objects to peoples who did not yet possess them and destroying dangerous spirits along the way.
Relation to Humans: The law, ceremony and sacred objects they established are still held and performed by Western Desert peoples, and the places they made remain part of living Country. Their story is painted, woven and sung today from Balgo to Papulankutja.

Heat lifts off the spinifex in visible bands, and the two of them walk through it without hurrying, because there is nowhere they need to be that they are not already making. Every ridge gets a name as they pass it. Every soak, every stand of desert oak, every animal that breaks cover ahead of them is sung, named, and set in its place. Behind them the country is finished. Ahead of them it is still waiting.

The Wati Kutjara are the Two Men, and the name is exactly that plain. In the Western Desert Language, *wati* is a man and *kutjarra* is two, and the phrase covers a stretch of desert larger than several European countries stacked together. Their track runs from the Kimberley down into South Australia, thousands of kilometres of it, which makes theirs one of the longest and most widely held Dreamings on the continent. At Balgo, in Kukatja country, it is among the most important stories there is.

Their totem is the goanna. Older reference works separate them into Kurukadi, the white goanna, and Mumba, the black, though the field ethnographies recorded at Balgo, in Pintupi country and at Ooldea mostly do not trouble with the individual names. There they are simply the two, moving together, doing everything in pairs. No source fixes their bodies the way a bestiary would. That is not an omission. A totemic ancestor is the goanna and the man at once, and the accounts leave the question where it belongs, in the split second where a heavy-bodied lizard with a whip tail and loose grey-brown skin over hard muscle is also two young men crossing hot sand. What the stories do insist on is their youth and their unmarried status, which in a society organised around marriage puts them permanently slightly outside the order they are busy creating.

Their first act was to sing about their own names. Before the country, before the animals, before anything else, they established who they were. Only then did they decide to travel, turning south-east toward peoples who did not yet hold the rituals that the Dreaming heroes knew, and everything they encountered on the way they sang into existence and named. They made sacred objects as they went. The ceremonial boards attributed to them are the physical proof that the journey happened, and the means by which the living stay in contact with the ancestors who made it.

They were also, from the beginning, dangerous. Filled with magical power, the brothers spent a long portion of their travels destroying malignant spirits, and the most widely repeated episode of the whole cycle turns on that. Kidili, the Moon-man, went after a group of the first women. In the version Ronald Berndt recorded at Ooldea in 1941, the Two Men came at him with a magical boomerang and put it through him, castrating him, and he died of the wound at a waterhole. The boomerang carries the story in more ways than one: among Pilbara groups the brothers used the same power to pull the Wonatara women free of two great serpents. Other tellings are less flattering. In accounts from Balgo it is the Wati Kutjara themselves who go after the women.

The stories do not agree, and they were never supposed to.

They ended up in the sky, which is where a good deal of Western Desert law is kept. At Ooldea the Two Men are the stars of Gemini, and the record of that identification comes with its own small history attached, since the Wati Kutjara narrative reached Ooldea from the Warburton Range through the movement of people across the desert and settled there among the local star traditions. Further west, groups around the Warburton Ranges read the long chain of dark patches lying along the Milky Way between Alpha Centauri and Alpha Cygni as a great ceremonial board the brothers made while travelling with the seven sisters. The night desert gets cold fast and the sky over it is unusually clear, and both of those facts matter to how precisely this knowledge is held.

Their powers follow from what they are. They name, and naming makes the thing real, which is the single most consequential ability in the entire cycle. They carry magic strong enough to kill the Moon. Around Balgo they are likened to the wind and are said to take its form when danger closes on them, which is a neat solution to almost any problem and also an admission that danger closes on them at all.

That is the limit. Beings who need an escape can be caught. They are two young men without wives, outside the marriage system, mobile precisely because nothing holds them, and the same freedom that lets them walk from the Kimberley to South Australia leaves them without the protection that belonging provides. Kanytjupayi Benson, whose woven figures of the Wati Kutjarra are held by the National Gallery of Victoria, tells it as a journey from Perth out to Blackstone and Docker River that ends with the men meeting their deaths at the hands of another ancestral man. Their reach also ends where their song does. The Two Men are everywhere along their track and nowhere off it, and the track, however long, has edges.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the Wati-kutjara?

The Wati-kutjara are two ancestral lizard-men of Australian Aboriginal tradition whose Dreaming journey crosses the Western Desert from the Kimberley to South Australia. Their totem is the goanna, and older reference works name them Kurukadi, the white goanna, and Mumba, the black goanna. In English their songline is usually called the Two Men Dreaming.

What does the name Wati-kutjara mean?

It means “two men” in the Western Desert Language, where *wati* is a man and *kutjarra* is two. The name is descriptive rather than personal, which is why many ethnographic accounts refer to them only as the Two Men rather than by individual names.

What did the Wati-kutjara do to the Moon?

They killed him. In the version recorded at Ooldea in South Australia, the Moon-man Kidili pursued a group of the first women, and the Wati-kutjara struck him with a magical boomerang, castrating him so that he died of the wound. Other versions from the Balgo region reverse the roles and have the Wati-kutjara pursuing the women themselves.

Are the Wati-kutjara connected to any stars?

Yes. At Ooldea the Two Men are identified with the constellation Gemini, and groups around the Warburton Ranges read the line of dark patches in the Milky Way between Alpha Centauri and Alpha Cygni as a great ceremonial board the brothers made. The story travelled to Ooldea from the Warburton Range through the movement of desert peoples.

Is the Wati-kutjara story still told today?

It is. Wati kutjara remains one of the most important Dreamings around Balgo in Western Australia, and places and events from the journey are a frequent subject of painting from Balgo and its outstations. The National Gallery of Victoria holds woven Wati Kutjarra figures made in 2003 by the Ngaanyatjarra artist Kanytjupayi Benson.