What Did Dream Time Mean for the Australian Aborigines and What Effect Did It Have on Their Art?

April 27, 2022 Post a Comment

The Dreaming
Explaining cosmos
Creating and recreating life
Sacred sites
Transmitting the Dreaming
The police force
Video The Dreaming
Video : A Story

The Dreaming

Globe view & The Dreaming

Each of us has a worldview.

Our worldview provides united states with an ordered sense of reality. Our worldview enables usa to make sense of what we do and hat nosotros observe in the world and provides us with a sense of certainty and, to some degree at least, predictability. Information technology gives united states security because it enables us to translate what happens in the globe in terms of a mental framework that makes sense to us.

The Dreaming is the worldview which structures many Indigenous cultures, providing Indigenous Australians with an ordered sense of reality-a framework for understanding and interpreting the earth and the identify of humans in that globe. This worldview performs three major functions in Indigenous cultures:

It provides an explanation of creation-how the universe and everything within information technology came into being.
It provides a set of blueprints for life-all living forms were created through The Dreaming.
It provides a fix of rules or laws for living. The Dreaming provides rules for social relationships, economic activities, religious activities and ceremonies, and art-in short, the rules governing all activities.

The term 'The Dreaming' is a European term, coined by anthropologists. This use of the term was particularly consolidated past the well-known anthropologist WE. H. Stanner in his 1953 article 'The Dreaming' (reprinted in Stanner, 1979). However, we should notation that the concept really has nothing to do with dreaming-although sometimes dreams can convey messages. Dissimilar language groups (see below) apply their own terms to refer to what Europeans call 'The Dreaming'.

The Dreaming is sometimes referred to as mythology. While technically this is an appropriate term, we should also note that this tin can exist used equally a derogatory term every bit in 'It's only a myth', significant 'It isn't really true'. The Dreaming is not mythology in this sense of not being true and it isn't about dreams-for many Indigenous Australians it is the truth about the meaning of everything. The Dreaming should e'er exist spelt with a upper-case letter 'D' to distinguish it from ordinary dreaming and it can also be preceded past a capital 'The' following the precedent established by Stanner.

Psychology and Ethnic Australians Foundations of Cultural Competence

The Dreaming

"The Dreaming" is the belief of many Aboriginal groups that Aboriginal people take been in Commonwealth of australia since the kickoff.

During this significant period the bequeathed spirits came up out of the earth and down from the heaven to walk on the country were they created and shaped its land formations, rivers, mountains, forests and deserts. These were created while the ancestors traveled, hunted and fought. They besides created all the people, animals and vegetation that were to be apart of the land and laid down the patterns their lives were to follow. Information technology was the spirit ancestors who gave Ancient people the lores, customs and codes of behave, and who are the source of the songs, dances, designs, languages, and rituals that are the basic of Aboriginal religious expression. These ancestors were spirits who appeared in a diversity of forms. When their work was completed the ancestral spirits went back into the world, the heaven and into the animals, land formation, and rivers. The ancestors-beings are 'live' in the spirit of Australian Aboriginals.

This rock painting depicts the creation spirit Biame. Creator of all things, this item image is known to the local Wanaruah people every bit the Keeper of the Valley.

The Rainbow Serpent is one of the Dreamtime creators. Dreamtime stories can vary between tribes, however the Rainbow Serpent is ane of the few mutual to all. In the Dreaming the globe was flat and empty. The rainbow Ophidian lay sleeping under the ground. When information technology was fourth dimension, she pushed herself upwards, with all the animals in her belly waiting to be born. Calling to the animals to come up from their sleep she threw the land out, making mountains and hills and spilled h2o over the land, making rivers and lakes. She fabricated the fire and the lord's day and all the colours. The serpent or snake plays an important role in every culture, sometimes as the Creators or Source of everything other times as the giver of knowledge, sexual energy, spiritual awakener or source of evil. Not only does it connect Aboriginal tribes, it likewise unites people of all different cultures and walks of life throughout the world.
(From http:rainbowserpent.net/background/philosophy/)

Farther Reading

Living the Dreaming, by Bill Edwards in Ancient Australia, An Introductory Reader in Aboriginal Studies, Second Edition (Edited past Colin Bourke, Eleanor Bourke and Neb Edwards). University of Queensland Press. 1998, 2004.

A few of the points made in the reading:

The kickoff Europeans coming to Australia had preconceived ideas of religion and what information technology involved (churches, priests, etc). When they could non encounter these things in Australian Aboriginal communities they presumed Aborigines had "no religious notions or ideas". These Europeans were wrong.

The Dreaming is difficult for people of western civilisation to comprehend because western norms such as the idea of linear time are not followed.

The Dreaming is used ordinarily to draw the Aboriginal creative epoch.

The Dreaming does not assume the creation of the earth from zilch.

It assumes a preexistent substance, often described as a watery expanse or a characterless patently. From this substance spirit beings emerged and formed creatures frequently made up of various humans, plants and animals. These creatures roamed the land, doing this they created what is at present the land, e.g. "the winding track of a snake became a watercourse".

The entire Australian continent is dotted with sites that are sacred to dissimilar Aboriginal groups, this is because these spirit creatures are thought to have created and formed these sites with their deportment in the Dreaming.

Aborigines are aware of the Dreaming in in that location every day life, eastward.g. upon budgeted a waterhole an Aborigine might throw a rock into the h2o to warning the spirit of a water ophidian that he/she is approaching. He/she would do this considering of a real fear that a water ophidian might assail them should they not alert information technology of their approach.

Relationships are extremely important in Ancient communities, everyone knows what blazon of human relationship they take with other members of the community, these relationships are oft based on relationships accorded to the spirits of the Dreaming.

Explaining the process of creation

'In the first' the land was a flat, featureless, arid plain.

No animals or plants lived on it, and no birds flew over it. However, during The Dreaming ancestral beings, the forerunners of all living species, began stirring and finally emerged from the land, the sea and the heaven to begin a series of odysseys which carried them throughout the length and breadth of Australia.

The emergence and the subsequent travels of these beings, which were notable for frequent fights, lovemaking, and mystical changes in shape and form, resulted in the formation of the topography of the Australian landscape. The rivers, the mountains, the sand hills, the rocks and the lakes were all created during these travels, every bit these beings left their imprint on the mural.

The landscape was also shaped by ceremonies performed by these ancestral beings as they recalled their wanderings and feats in trip the light fantastic and song. The remnants of these ceremonies (decorations, feathers, dried claret, stone chips, etc.) turned into rocks, trees and plants which may still be seen. For example, blood from wounds incurred in battles became deposits of reddish ochre, and parts of bodies hewn off became trees or rock outcrops. The places where these major events left their imprints on the landscape are typically described as 'sacred sites' or 'sites of significance'.

Psychology and Indigenous Australians Foundations of Cultural Competence

Creating and re-creating life

As well as creating the landscape, the ancestral beings also created all the life forms:the birds, the trees, the kangaroos, the ants and all other species (including people). These ancestral beings could change shape or form, from (for instance) a red kangaroo, to a person, and then dorsum to a red kangaroo.

When they created life forms they created them in their own epitome. And then, a red kangaroo bequeathed existence created red kangaroos, but also created people who then shared a common ancestor with all blood-red kangaroos. When we talk about 'totems' or 'totemic relationships', this is what we are talking about-groups of people who share common ancestral links with specific animals. When an Ethnic human being says 'That kangaroo is my blood brother' he means it literally. They have a common ancestor-the red kangaroo ancestral existence.

These totemic relationships institute one of the fundamental determinants of Indigenous identity. We will hash out the concept of totemic relationships in more than particular later in this chapter. These ancestral beings, having created the earth and all of the life forms, so returned to where they came from. Some returned to the land, some to the heaven, some to the waters or seas. However, when they were on the earth they carried a 'life force' with them, which they used to create all the dissimilar forms of life. Walbiri people know this life force or 'life spirit' as guruwari. All living beings are alive considering they are invested with this guruwari. The guruwari is of the aforementioned nature every bit the beingness that produced information technology, and the being of modern counterparts of the Dreamtime being is directly related to the beingness of this guruwari.

The state is the reservoir of this guruwari-when an animal (or person) dies, the guruwari returns to the land. When a new creature is born, it becomes alive because its body has been entered (or quickened) past guruwari emerging from the land. This begins to explain why the land is so important to Indigenous Australians. It is the repository of the life force which is needed to create new life. Without a continuous recycling of guruwari, no new plants, animals or people can exist born. Ane of the potential dangers of mining, of grade, is that destroying the land will destroy the guruwari, so catastrophe all life.

Psychology and Ethnic Australians Foundations of Cultural Competence

Sacred sites

This concept of a life strength which creates all new life also explains one of the functions of religious ceremony.

Sacred sites are particularly strong sources of this life force. Some of the ceremonies held at sacred sites are a re-creation of the events which created the site during The Dreaming. The re-cosmos of these events is part of a process of encouraging the life force located at that site to remain active, to keep coming out of the country, and to create new life. If the ceremonies are not performed, the life force will get dormant and no new life will exist created.

And indeed, in areas with extensive mining, where Ethnic people have been removed from the country, sacred sites accept been destroyed, sacred water holes have been polluted and ceremonies are no longer performed, the furnishings on native flora and animate being are there for everybody to encounter. How many ethnic species have disappeared since the arrival of Europeans? The Indigenous explanations of why this has occurred may differ from Western scientific explanations, but the evidence certainly supports Aboriginal explanations as well as Western ones.

Psychology and Indigenous Australians Foundations of Cultural Competence

Transmitting The Dreaming

All knowledge comes from The Dreaming and is held in ii forms:

A. It is held in the ceremonies (the rock engravings, the ground paintings, the bark paintings, the songs and the dances).

B. Information technology is also held, and expressed, in story. Indigenous cultures were structured as oral cultures. The stories were not written downwardly-they were told, taught, remembered and retold. The telling of Story is a central element of the process of teaching The Dreaming and the rules laid down by The Dreaming. Stories are not simply children'south stories about 'How the emu lost its wings'. The telling of Story is the vehicle for many other functions relating to teaching The Dreaming and The Police force, including:

accounting for natural phenomena
providing maps of the state
recording boundaries
teaching about the uses of different plants, animals and other resources
teaching social mores and rules Three providing legitimacy for these rules-where they came from and why
providing warnings about the consequences of breaking the law
providing entertainment
locating the individual inside the community and amalgam individual identity.

Psychology and Indigenous Australians Foundations of Cultural Competence

'Going through The Law'

A further, much more than formal procedure of learning near The Dreaming is often described equally 'Going through The Law'. Once young men and women reach a certain historic period (which varies between different groups, but is typically effectually puberty) they begin a lifelong process of learning the knowledge of The Dreaming. This is a highly structured, formalised and controlled process.

Remember-the country is alive and is powerful. The ancestral beings are powerful. They continue to reside in the land and they tin can still exert influence. Because ceremony, and knowledge near ceremony, can provide access to that power it can be dangerous and must only exist acquired by wise, responsible and trustworthy people. Cognition is therefore arranged hierarchically, from the public knowledge which everybody in the community must have admission to, through to highly secret knowledge which merely a few senior people have admission to.

This knowledge is revealed carefully, in a highly controlled series of stages. How far an private moves through this hierarchy depends on how trustworthy they are considered to be by the Elders. The farther through the hierarchy a person moves, the greater power and say-so they take. This is a highly structured process, undertaken in secret and accompanied by ceremony and ritual. As an individual moves through these stages, they are marked by a range of signs or symbols of rank or authority. These signs vary beyond different linguistic communication groups but might include, for instance:

initiation
body beautification (including red headbands, feathers or bone)
tooth revulsion
trunk scarring (cicatrisation).

This is a hierarchical lodge in which potency is vested increasingly in those who have progressed further through the system, with these symbols providing public acquittance of authority and status.

Psychology and Ethnic Australians Foundations of Cultural Competence