MPavilion Opening November 2020

MTalks
65,000+ Years of Indigenous Astronomy

MPavilion

Free!

This event is now complete. If you want to revisit the talk, visit our Library, or subscribe to the MPavilion podcast via iTunes, Pocketcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Image by Anthony Richardson

At the close of the MPavilion season, we’re looking back at some of our favourite MTalks. All MTalks are available via our Library, or subscribe to the MPavilion podcast via Soundcloud.

For more than 65,000 years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have studied the intricate ways in which the sky and land are connected. Listen back to Kamilaroi astrophysics student Krystal De Napoli to hear about the methods Indigenous astronomers use to predict weather and harvest cycles from the sky, plan ceremonial practices, and navigate vast distances.

This presentation explores the use of orality as the vehicle for encoding and preserving astronomical knowledge over thousands of years, while describing phenomena such as solar eclipses, supernova, variable stars and moon halos. 

Listen in here.

In collaboration with

Wominjeka (Welcome). We acknowledge the Yaluk-ut Weelam as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet. Yaluk-ut Weelam means ‘people of the river camp’ and is connected with the coastal land at the head of Port Phillip Bay, extending from the Werribee River to Mordialloc. The Yaluk-ut Weelam are part of the Boon Wurrung, one of the five major language groups of the greater Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to the land, their ancestors and their elders—past, present and to the future.