My Indigenous culture has many traditional stories about the stars. The star stories are told so our people can learn the pointers and direction-finding markers for travelling across these countries. The Songlines, or the song stories of our people that are sung, danced and memorised, are for travellers to know the route to their destination. We believe the tracks have been forged by Creation Spirits during the Dreaming. One of these songlines is the Seven Sisters. In the Hunter where I live, there are rocky outcrops that are markers for the Seven Sisters. The Seven Sisters are reflected in the sky as Pleiades, or as some people call it, the Jockey’s Cap. In the Hunter they are situated on the Aboriginal trade route that has the Great North Road built on it. At a recent NATSIAC1 gathering, many of the delegates, who had come from all over Australia, had Seven Sisters stories; so, it is a common marker for directions. The Northern Territory women recognised our Seven Sisters before we mentioned it, which meant for us they have the same songline. It was a star that was the pointer to the baby Jesus. At funerals I always tell this story, especially when there are children. The Milky Way is called Dinewan (the emu). If you look up in the night sky, you will see a giant cloud of stars that are in the shape of an emu. We believe that this is the Great Corroboree. We believe that when we die, we go up into the heavens. That is why when someone has passed away, we go outside at dusk and watch the sky. The first star that shines is the campfire of the person who has just passed away. We stay, watching the sky and as each star starts to creep out in the sky and the sky darkens, the campfires of our ancestors become visible. These campfires keep coming out as stars and the campfires 1 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anglican Council 47
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