Chevron 7

The Rainbow Serpent has many names in the different countries across this continent. If I met you face to face, I would tell you the name it has in the country where I live. But sadly, this is the internet, and for privacy's sake I'll have to be a little vague.

Each Aboriginal family has its own stories about the Rainbow Serpent. But in most of them, it's the primary creator-diety for the land and water, carving the river and pushing up the hills with its body. Each family has its own stories for where the Serpent went, which explain the landscape they're from. These stories are important, because they help the people to navigate. They explain the path of a river that connects two locations and which forks to take to get there. Where the Rainbow Serpent went underground is a good place to dig in the ground for water, because the Elders who first told the story knew there's an underground river there. These stories are survival.

And the stories predate the sea level rise.

Two-way science is an emerging field which draws from western science and Indigenous science to add knowledge to both. For example, biochemists are asking Elders about medicine plants to find chemicals they can use to invent new drugs. Ecologists are experimenting with using western farming techniques with Indigenous plants, which are resistant to the local heat and droughts. Mathematicians are examining the rules of Indigenous marriage systems to learn how they preserve genetic diversity in a limited population.

Two-way science is an emerging field. Indigenous knowledge is still ahead in some areas. A lot of westerners don't respect traditional knowledge. And that's why, when a group of Tiwi Elders complained that an underwater pipeline would intersect and potentially damage their underwater songlines and the resting place of the Rainbow Serpent, the judge threw the case out. He said there wasn't enough evidence that the pipeline would damage the heritage sites. But I think we should do the science to find the truth before we let a mining company build all over the place.

Here you go. Looks like it's somewhat recent news (2021)

https://www.arc.gov.au/news-and-publications/media/first-underwater-indigenous-sites-found-australian-seabed

The ancient underwater sites, at Cape Bruguieres and Flying Foam Passage, provide new evidence of Aboriginal ways of life from when the seabed was dry land, due to lower sea levels, thousands of years ago.