RAINBOW SNAKE (Rainbow Serpent) is an almost ubiquitous but elusive mythological figure throughout the Australian continent. To A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1930), the Rainbow Snake was "perhaps the most important nature-deity, … the most...

The Rainbow Serpent (also known as the Rainbow Snake) is a major mythological being for Aboriginal people across Australia, although the creation stories associated with it are best known from northern Australia. The Rainbow Serpent is seen as the...

In this paper, I illustrate the way one Aboriginal artist challenged what he perceived as an essentialised concept of Aboriginality, by rejecting rainbow serpent iconography. The motivations for this rejection were the artist's strong belief in the Christian God as creator and his reaction...

McKNIGHT, DAVID. People, Countries, and the Rainbow Serpent: systems of classification among the Lardil of Mornington Island (Oxford studs, in anthrop. ling. 12). x, 270 pp., map, illus., tables, bibliogr. Oxford, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999. [pounds sterling]50.00 (cloth) David McKnight's...