Nanggumiri Karwadi All-Mother cult transmission

Karwadi

Source term: bullroarer / Karwadi

the Daly River name for the bullroarer and for the cult that took its name

In the 1920s the people of the Daly River became convinced that Angamunggi the All-Father — their form of the Rainbow Serpent — had deserted them. Barren women, spreading sickness, dwindling game: proof, people said, that he no longer looked after them; Stanner was told simply that Angamunggi had “gone away.” Into that vacancy came Kunabibi, the All-Mother, whose cult arrived, Stanner wrote, “at a beautifully appropriate time.” On the Daly it took the form of the cult of Karwadi — the name by which the bullroarer, symbol of the All-Mother, had been known even in the days of the All-Father. Young Nanggumiri men carried the rites home from Victoria River country. Durmugam was one of them: not the leader, in Stanner's judgement, but the secular force of the movement. In 1978 Stanner returned to Peppimenarti with three bullroarers collected in the 1930s — one of them Durmugam’s own gift — so they could serve again in a Punj ceremony.

It was this [Karwadi] that the young Nangiomeri [Nanggumiri] brought back from the Victoria — a secret wisdom, a power, and a dream shared by no one else on the Daly River.

Stanner, 'Durmugam: A Nangiomeri' (1959), in White Man Got No Dreaming (1979), p. 84

Particulars

Object

The Karwadi bullroarer, symbol of the All-Mother.

Function

Karwadi, the name of the All-Mother's bullroarer, named the secret cult that young Nanggumiri men brought back from Victoria River country in the 1920s.