{"id":559424,"date":"2026-07-25T20:58:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T20:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/559424\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T20:58:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T20:58:15","slug":"connected-under-the-milky-way-new-exhibition-shares-indigenous-astronomical-knowledge-from-australia-to-south-africa-indigenous-australians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/559424\/","title":{"rendered":"Connected under the Milky Way: new exhibition shares Indigenous astronomical knowledge from Australia to South Africa | Indigenous Australians"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carlleen Dingo\u2019s earliest memories are of looking up at the inky black skies above Australia\u2019s north-west coastline, awash with planets, stars and galaxies. Geraldton, or Jambinu<\/a>, is a coastal town 600 kilometres north of Perth, known for its wildflowers, red earth, fierce winds, undulating sandy dunes.<\/p>\n

But at night, there\u2019s another world on display.<\/p>\n

The Yamaji-Wajarri people have looked to the skies for thousands of years as a teacher and a guide.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt night-time, living out in the bush, [I] always sat around the fire and looked up, looking at the embers flicking in the air. There\u2019s a sky full of stars.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get curious and you watch, and then you watch them move. And when you move to different places on country, you try and look for them stars and pin them down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up, Dingo heard the stories from her grandmothers about how her ancestors would travel and hunt by reading the skies.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPops used to point out \u2018oh that star there, that\u2019s the Milky Way\u2019\u2026 you understand how the travellers travelled back in the day by using the stars and going through Country at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

That relationship is explored in a global exhibition showcasing how Indigenous artists from Australia and South Africa see the night sky. The exhibition, called Cosmic Echoes: A shared sky has toured Africa and Europe before coming back to Australia.<\/p>\n

Dingo is one of the artists involved. She says the scale of the exhibition began to sink in when she followed her paintings journey from her Geraldton home across the Indian Ocean. \u201cI got told that my painting was going to go on a tour going to Africa\u201d she says. \u201cThen it went to Manchester and Luxembourg in Europe and I was like: \u2018well, alright then!\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Linked by the stars<\/p>\n

About 300 kilometres inland from Geraldton, the arid red earth is punctured by native grasses, spinifex, and saltbush, and bursting wildflowers that spring up after the rains. This isolated and sparsely populated region is home to one of the largest satellites and radio telescopes in the world.<\/p>\n

Dr Douglas Bock, Director of CSIRO\u2019s Space and Astronomy unit, says the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, or Murchison radio-astronomy observatory<\/a>, on Wajarri country is the result of a decades long relationship between the agency and the Wajarri Yamaji Aboriginal Corporation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been working now in this area I think for around 20 years,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was when we first started looking at this place and seeing the Murchison region as one of the best places in the world to do astronomy.\u201d<\/p>\n

CSIRO\u2019s radio telescope at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory on Wajarri Yamaji Country. Photograph: CSIRO\/Alex Cherney<\/p>\n

It hosts the quare Kilometre Array Observatory<\/a> (SKAO). Three dozen dish antennas standing as high as three storey building, each one with a diameter of 12 metres and spread across six square kilometres, work as one telescope. The technology maps distant galaxies, cosmic magnetic fields and black holes.<\/p>\n

Prof Jessica Dempsey has also looked up at the skies for as long as she can remember. The radio astronomer and director-general of the SKAO says the exhibition is an artistic exploration of science, technology and astronomy spanning two continents.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can only learn more by sharing the stories and the ways of looking at the world across these different communities,\u201d Dempsey says.<\/p>\n

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The next phase of the project to build a mid-frequency telescope in South Africa\u2019s arid Karoo region.<\/p>\n

For South African artist Junior Oliphant, a First Nations person who grew up in a coloured town still grappling with the brutal and racist impacts of colonial rule and apartheid, identity is complex.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn South Africa, we take pride in the word \u2018coloured\u2019, but for me it\u2019s also complicated,\u201d Oliphant says. \u201cI\u2019d like to believe that my ancestry is Khoisan, but it isn\u2019t something I can just claim. I don\u2019t have the elders\u2019 guidance or mentorship to find out who I am or where I\u2019m coming from. So the question of: who am I, where do I come from? Is a question I\u2019m asking through my paintings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Junior Oliphant explaining his painting, Children of the San XI: My Me Se Taal. Photograph: SKAO<\/p>\n

His painting in the exhibition depicts Dr Katrina Esau, or Ouma Katrina, a traditional language speaker and fierce advocate. He was then able to meet her at the Cape Town opening of the exhibition.<\/p>\n

\u201cOuma Katrina is the last living N|uu speaker in the world. She\u2019s like the last living link between a lost culture and a lost language,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Oliphant has now travelled to Geraldton for the Australian opening of the exhibition, and speaks about the ways Indigenous cultures in the southern hemisphere are connected through time and space by stories about the Milky Way. In Khoisan folklore, he says, \u201cthere was this girl who was kept in a cage, and she cried out until the cage exploded. The ashes flew into the sky and that is how the Milky Way was created.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Khoisan in South Africa used the stars like compasses \u2013 to guide when to move, when new plants would come, when seasons changed,\u201d Oliphant says. \u201cWith the Wajarri people, there are similarities in what they see in the stars too. Even though we are worlds apart, I feel like two different Aboriginal groups are connected under one star light.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dempsey says it took western technology centuries to catch up to the astronomical knowledge held by First Peoples. She gives the example of the Seven Sisters, also known as the Pleiades star cluster, which are found grouped together in the stories of many different cultures.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the pieces of astronomy that all of our Indigenous family knew a long time ago is, how did they know they were sisters? All of these stories of these particular stars are a family, and so already in the story, they\u2019e depicted by a lot of artists \u2026 as a family,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took us another several thousands of years before we had the technology to confirm that in a western science way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wajarri artist Carlleen Dingo at the recent ‘meet the artist’ gathering for the Cosmic Echoes exhibition. Photograph: Sebastian Neuweiler (Supplied)<\/p>\n

For Dingo, there is a deep sense of pride in knowing her people are recognised as the rightful hosts of some of the world\u2019s most ambitious science and technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a little Yamatji running around that bush, I never ever thought that this would be available,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019ve got the biggest satellites sitting out on Country. That\u2019s something to be proud of, because you always want to be the biggest and the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cosmic Echoes: a Shared Sky Indigenous art exhibition<\/a> opens in Geraldton on 23 July<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlleen Dingo\u2019s earliest memories are of looking up at the inky black skies above Australia\u2019s north-west coastline, awash…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-559424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}