AUSMAIN-001 - secondary catalog
Wiknatara (Wik-Iiyanh)
Australia - Western Cape York, Aurukun region - Cape York Peninsula
Restricted
moiya / pakapaka / moipaka English
moiya and pakapaka: Wikmunkan bullroarers; moipaka: Wiknatara bullroarers, male and female, described as husband and wife.
Etymology. The moipaka of the Wiknatara are a male and female pair of bullroarers explicitly said to be husband and wife — the male phallus-shaped, the female described as a wantyu pian or 'grown-up woman' — swung by married men as a charm to draw a married woman's attention. The account is Ursula McConnel's, as summarized and quoted by Geza Roheim. (medium confidence)
"It belongs to us women, we found it" — so the girls sing in the Wik-Mungkan and Wiknatara myth, whirling the bullroarers they discovered before ceding them: "But no matter! We leave it for the men! It is they who will always use it." Then they hid the roarer in the crack of a bloodwood tree and went down under the water, and that place became the auwa, the totem centre of the bullroarer. Four voices sound in the story: the Wik-Mungkan moiya and pakapaka, and the Wiknatara moipaka, a husband-and-wife pair, one bullroarer male and one female, married to each other. Among these Cape York peoples the roarer also closes a boy's initiation and turns in a married man's love-magic.
It belongs to us women, we found it.
Roheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, pp. 79-82, quoting McConnel, 'Bonefish and Bullroarer Totems' (1935)
- Object
- Wikmunkan and Wiknatara bullroarer totem complex: moiya, pakapaka, and male/female moipaka bullroarers.
- Function
- Women-first and gendered bullroarer myth: girls first sing and whirl the bullroarers, then leave them to men; Wiknatara moipaka are male/female husband-and-wife bullroarers.
- Map confidence
- high - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
- Source location
Page references
Roheim/McConnel source chain; McConnel AA191/29 and AA191/16/43 identifiers | AIATSIS MCCONNEL_U01-001390A, 00:11:35–00:29:48
- Initiation rite
- Women-linked
- Female-origin myth