‘Guma’maari and the Rainbow’ is a Dreaming story of how the parrots came to have coloured feathers as told by the Thurrawal (Dharawal) People of the Illawarra area of New South Wales.
In the Dreaming time long ago all the birds had black feathers. Traditional law said the Parrot clans must wear feather cloaks. All the feathers were black so all the parrots looked the same. The parrots discussed this and decided to ask the flowers where their many colours came from because once all the flowers were white. None of the flowers could remember until one parrot, Guma’maaria, accidently stepped on an orchid who explained that the orchids got their colours from the rainbow.
The parrots approached the rainbow very politely asking for its colours. The rainbow generously obliged and the parrots gathered up the beautiful colours. One by one all the parrot clans collected new cloaks of many colours and became the brightly coloured parrots we see in today’s skies.
The Coomaditchie United Aboriginal Corporation is a community organisation based in Port Kembla, New South Wales. Members of the Coomaditchie community are the custodians of the land in the area and have been a consistent presence in the area since prehistoric times.
The Ngaramurra Project provides a supportive pathway for young people to re-engage with education through a cultural framework. ‘Ngaramura’ is a Dharawal word meaning ‘see the way’.
There are other Indigenous stories of how the birds got their colours, one in this database is from the Baardi people from the Dampier Peninsula in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia. Below is a link to the entry for that book.
https://www.ncacl.org.au/atsi_resource/how-the-birds-got-their-colours/
Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander Resource
