Bill Harney Yidumduma Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1932 -

Bill Yidumduma Harney is an elder of the Wardaman people, whose traditional lands are near Katherine in the Northern Territory of Australia, and who lives at nearby Menngen Station. He is also known as an artist, storyteller, and musician.

Bill Yidumduma Harney and Ray Norris at the First Astronomers show at the Darwin Festival

Harney was born in 1931 at Brandy Bottle Creek, on Willeroo Station, NT. His biological father was the famous Irish-Australian writer William Edward Harney, but he was brought up in a traditional Aboriginal community by his adoptive Aboriginal father, Joe Jomornji, and mother, Ludi Yibuluyma. His sister was taken as part of the Stolen Generations, but he escaped because his mother covered him in charcoal to hide the whiteness of his skin.


Harney is well known as an advocate and ambassador for Aboriginal Australians, and has made several international tours promoting knowledge of Aboriginal Australians. He also appears regularly on TV, radio, and film, often speaking on the subject of Aboriginal Astronomy. In 2003 he published, with Hugh Cairns, Dark Sparklers, detailing the astronomy embedded in the Wardaman culture. He has been a finalist several times in the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. In August 2009 he featured in a two-man The First Astronomers show with astrophysicist Ray Norris at the Darwin Festival, and in November 2009 he was prominent in the Message Stick program on Aboriginal astronomy produced by ABC TV.

In 2020, the International Astronomical Union's Working Group for Small Body Nomenclature formally approved the asteroid 1979 MR2 as 7630 Yidumduma in honour of his sharing and promotion of traditional Wardaman astronomical knowledge through film, television, and books, including Dark Sparkers and Four Circles.