The creation period
None of the places we know in the world existed until creator beings, in the forms of people, plants and animals, traveled widely across the land and, in a process of creation and destruction, formed the landscape as we know it today. Anangu land is still inhabited by the spirits of dozens of these ancestral creator beings which are referred to as Tjukuritja or Waparitja.
The journeys and activities of the creator beings are recorded in the landscape. Sites where significant events in their story took place are linked by what we call, iwara (paths or tracks). Some of the sites are so very significant that they are known as 'sacred sites'. Today our people still know where these sites and these iwara are and where they go although there is no physical road. Our grandmothers and grandfathers teach us this.
The iwara (tracks) link places that are sometimes hundreds of kilometres outside the park and beyond Yankunytjatjara/Pitjantjatjara country. So they are significant to other groups of indigenous people too.
For example, the Mala Tjukurpa involves three groups of Mala (rufous hare-wallaby) people who travel from the north to reach Uluru. Two groups then flee south and south-east to sites in South Australia. Kuniya Tjukurpa tells of the travels of the Kuniya (woma python) from hundreds of kilometres east of Uluru.
Many other Tjukurpa such as Kalaya (emu), Liru (poisonous snake), Lungkata (blue tongue lizard), Luunpa (kingfisher) and Tjintir-tjintirpa (willie wagtail) travel through the park. Other Tjukurpa affect only one specific area. Many exploits of Tjukurpa involve ancestral beings going underground.
Kuniya, the woma python, lived in the rocks at Uluru where she fought the Liru, the poisonous snake.
