Gadjeri
GADJERI. The name Gadjeri (Gadjari, Kadjeri) is known over a wide area of northern Australia. It means "old woman," implying status and not necessarily age. Gadjeri is also the "sacred mother," or "mother of us all," and the theme of birth, death, and rebirth is pervasive throughout all of the myths concerning her. She symbolizes the productive qualities of the earth—of all natural resources, including human beings. But it is people, and not natural species, who came from her uterus in the creative era of the Dreaming. Among a number of language groups from the Roper River westward, she is called Kunapipi (or Gunabibi), which means "uterus," "penis incision" (and, by extension, "vagina"), and "emergence" (referring to rebirth). In that same area she is also called Mumuna or Mumunga, a bull-roarer that, when swung, is her voice. In the northwest, on the Daly River and at Port Keats, as in the central-west part of the Northern Territory, she is also a bull-roarer named Kalwadi, although the term Gadjeri is more generally used; at Port Keats her local name is Mutjingga ("old woman"). In the southeastern Kimberley and southward into the Western Desert, she is known as Ganabuda. Mostly the Mother is a single mythic being, but in some cultural areas she may be identified with two females of equivalent characteristics, while the term Ganabuda may refer to a mythic group of women.
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