Cultural Aspects
Unit 1: The Dreaming
Cultural Aspects Historical Issues Race Relations Contemporary Issues
Unit 1: The Dreaming Unit 2: Spirituality Unit 3: Protocols and Behaviours Unit 4: Country
Above: Satellite image of North Balranald region annotated with Aboriginal Dreaming tracks. 1 ms. map: col.; 28.9 x 28.9 cm. Map Collection
DREAM TIME THE DREAMTIME DREAMTIME STORY COUNTRY MAPPING ELDER RESPONSIBILITIES ART KNOWLEDGE
Unit 1, The Dreaming, explores the interconnections between the human, sacred and physical dimensions of the world, how knowledge is passed through the generations of Aboriginal people since the beginning (The Dreamtime).
The Dreaming refers to the continuous passing on of knowledge through cultural practises, such as storytelling, painting, making sacred objects, singing and dancing.
The Dreaming must not be confused with the Western idea of sleep dreaming or day dreaming. The various used by different Aboriginal groups to signal The Dreaming, lose much of their meanings in translation. The Dreaming involves active participation in, and alert attention to, cultural practises. Highly active listening and energetic interaction using a range of modes of are essential for the knowledge to to be passed on. Many modes of teaching and learning are practised, such as dancing, singing, story telling, and making art and artefacts. These practises contain sacred knowledge, through use of symbols, which can only be understood only by the initiated.
The Dreaming, represented at the centre of the diagram above, is the ancient system of beliefs and practises shared amongst groups of people throughout Australia before colonisation. It is Ancestral Law, passed down from Ancient Ancestral Beings. When the cultural practises are maintained, connections are maintained with all aspects of the world, and between all people.
Variations in practises between different groups are acknowledged and respected. Some stories, such as that of the Rainbow Serpent, contain knowledge which is passed on and shared amongst many groups, through Songlines extending vast distances throughout Australia. Such sharing of sacred knowledge through symbols ensures identity with land and all living beings.
Knowledge of the Raibow Serpent is knowledge about the very beginning of the world, The Dreamtime, and how humans became who they are now.
July 25, 2006
The Altjering, or Tjukurrpa is the creation period in Aboriginal cosmology. The dreamtime symbolises to Aboriginal people that all life is part of one interconnected system, a vast network of relationships that come into existence with the spirit ancestors; also known as the Dreaming.
Sheridan, Anne, Tranter, Joan, 2006 edition, 0066a: Learner's Guide to Aspects of Cultural Studies A, Open Training and Education Network (OTEN)/Aboriginal Program Unit, NSW Dept. Education & Training, L G.
THE DREAMING
Different Aboriginal words that different Aboriginal peoples use for the Dreaming have been translated into English. It's inevitable that there'll be misinterpretations by an English person reading or hearing about the Dreaming. It's easy to translate the words into that which is most familiar with their own experiences: the dreams we have at night.
It takes time to read about and listen to examples of the Dreaming to get over this, and to get behind the word and into something of the Aboriginal experience that it points to.
The Dreaming does not refer to a fixed time in the past, like "once upon a time". The Dreaming is a continuous interconnection between the spiritual, physical and human, through the past, present and future.
Last week I saw the new film Australian, 10 Canoes, where the narrator, David Gulpilil, prepares us at the start for a different kind of story from "once upon a time". He makes a joke about the European's expectations of a 'story', and draws us instead into a world where past and present are a continuum, where land and people remain connected through Aboriginal Law. Generations of Elders talking and young people listening, as they go about their daily tasks and passtimes, is part of the Dreaming. The telling is keeping alive the original laws given to humans by the great Spirit Ancestors who created the world.
10 Canoes, film, 2006, Director, Rolf De Heer
One thousand years ago, Dayindi, played by Gulpilil's son Jamie, joins other men on a trip to make bark canoes to hunt for goose eggs. The expedition is led by old Minygululu (Peter Minygululu) who has been made aware Dayindi covets his third and youngest wife. The old man's way of dealing with the situation is to tell the younger man a story set long, long ago when there was a similar problem involving the young wife of a tribal leader.
Streeton, R.,The Australian, 2006, Ten Canoes take us for a ride, URL:http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/ 0,20867,19419966-5001562,00.html [online accessed 25 July 2006]
A train of thoughts, images or fancies passing through the mind during sleep; a vision during sleep; the state in which that occurs
Shorter Oxford Dictionary, 1973, p.606, Oxford University Press
Flying in my dream over a warm shallow sea in Bali, and struggling to climb some narrow wobbly stairs, I have certain physical and mental sensations. Then I wake, recognising the feelings as expressions of real life choices I have to make. I can choose one thing and feel calm and free, or another thing, and feel restless and constrained. That's my interpretation of the dream: I have choices. "Sleep on it," I tell myself when something troubles my mind, "and all will be clearer in the morning." This seems to be an idea many of us share, that we've grown up with. Anyway, it works for me, and interpreting a dream is a very personal thing; only I can really know how to read it. Oh, I'm aware of some of Freud and Jung's thoughts on dream interpretation. There seem to be symbols that appear in dreams, and they may represent some common experiences. But no-one else can understand my dream in the way that I do.
Last night I painted an ariel perspective of icebergs melting in the oceans, with occasional shapes reminiscent of continents, and photographed it as it evolved. The world changes in cycles: Earth warms, ice melts, and we head into another ice age.
July 26, 2006
The Story of the Eruption of the Earth and the Waratah
Here is Mount Wilson with flames shooting out from within it. The white figures coming from various directions towards the top are the tribes that had come to form a big camp. They have all died, except for those at the foothills. A dark mist surrounds the mountain, and the white part of the top is where Wombat-skin lay and stopped the flames with the waratarh branches around him, and where Coomla died. Did the mountain errupt because the tribes would not share? And did Coomla die because he was trying to do things that he was unititiated in?
This story tells about the formation of Mt Wilson in the Blue Mountains, near Sydney. I read it in Australian Dreaming - 40,000 Years of Aboriginal Australia. It's a long and detailed story about intricate connections between tribal Law and the land. Here is my summary of that reading:
In the Dreamtime, many tribes from the Hawksbury River and the Hartley district travelled up to a high place, now called Kurrajong Heights, and formed a big camp with the Mount Wilson people. There were plenty of animals and plants around for them all to be well fed and clothed.
One of the young men from this group, hiding in a wombat skin, spied enemy tribes moving towards them from the Hunter Valley. He told some of the Mount Wilson people, and then the adult men and some of the women from the big camp prepared for a great corroboree. They cleared some ground at the mountain foothills, leaving the uninitiated young men, children and younger women behind at the camp. It was a searing hot day, and ominous dark mists gathered round the mountains.
Night fell, and as the sound of the corroboree filled the air, the earth shook and roared and split open, shooting great flames up into the sky. The flames must be stopped, or the young people will die!
The young 'wombat skin' man grabbed a clump of waratah stems and leaves, traditionally used to repel heat and fire, and ran off into the night. Coomla, a younger man, followed him, gathering more plants.
The sky suddenly lit up with stars, revealing them campsite, where the young people were sick and injured, and out of reach.
Holding the plants before them, they entered into a hot cave, and towards the fire. It rose from beneath the ground, through a crack in the mountain. More waratah would be needed!
Wombat-skin and Coomla ran to get more waratah, but were blocked by the hot earth, which they could not leap clear of, and an evil spirit obstructing them at the cave entrance. Wombat-skin took some pipeclay and made sacred signs on his body. He yelled out to the Great Spirit Ancestor for help. Coomla heard the call, and although he was uninitiated, he understood its meaning: it was to be his death!
Again Wombat-skin yelled to the Great Spirit Ancestor. This time, the leaves of the waratah, which were just out of their reach beyond the cave, began to change! The petioles, or stalks that join the leaves to the stems, were growing longer. Now they could grasp them. Together Coomla and Wombat-skin leapt at the branches and gathered enough clumps to stop the fire.
But Coomla grew strangely weak, and his arms and legs burned.
Wombat-skin, who had enough wararahs to completely cover himself, returned to the fire's source. Lying across the hole, he stopped the fire and he was not burned.
But what of Coomla? What was wrong? He had clutched a watatah too tightly after it had been touched by the Great Spirit and befor the Spirit had left it. The petioles were still growing, and his uninitiated hand had stopped their growth. This explains why most of the leaves of the waratah are imperfect.
All the young people left at the camp were later found dead. The tribes that had come together returned to where they had come from, carrying their dead. The tribe from the Hunter Valley had retreated when they felt the earth move.
And Coomla? Nobody dared to touch his body.
Signs of volcanic eruption of mount Wilson and nearby Mount Tomah can be seen today. The great volcanic crack is still visible, and rainforest vegetation grows out of volcanic soils. At the foot of Mt Wilson, the clearing made for the big corroboree remains.
Isaacs, Jennifer,1980,Australian Dreaming - 40,000 Years of Aboriginal Australia, p.29-30, Landsdown Press, Sydney
Here are some scans of a geological map of the area in the Blue Mountains where this Dreamtime story takes place, and where the Daruk people are said to have lived. Yet as the story suggests, many people from many places had come here and left again. The names of the places mentioned in the story have been underlined in yellow: Mount wilson, Mount Tomah and Kurrajong. The volcanic rock, granite, is coloured red. The map indicates volcanic activity dating back a long time before humans lived in Australia. There is no evidence of a volcanic plug. Mount Wilson appears to have formed through erosion of the material around it.
The Dreamtime story about Mount Wilson points to the importance of initiation for the survival of the Aboriginal person, his land and his people. I found it difficult to summarise the physical descriptions of the volcano errupting, and perhaps I've simplified things too much in an attempt to make it more logical to my mind.
In 1988 a friend of mine called Barbara gave me a book, Reading the Country, a collaboration of Kim Benterrak, Stephen Muecke and Paddy Roe. The front flyleaf explains:
A book has to be a set of traces, words going somewhere...where one person's story ends the other one takes off. Reading the Country consciously follows up these traces and 'readings', becomming a journey through landscape into language and ideas, and personal and cultural location.
At the beginning of a journey, when you are about to cover strange territory, you are always ignorant and you have to rely on the local guides. They are the ones who know the safe tracks as well as the places of danger...one ignores the local guide at one's peril, for he is telling us how to survive in his country, and survival depends not just on the right sort of physical treatment of the country, but also what one says about it, writes about it, and the images one makes about it.
Benterrak, K., Muecke, S., Roe, P., 1984,Reading the Country, Freemantle Arts Centre Press
'Reading the country' described in this way strikes me like life itself: a cumulative experience through time, looking and listening; a journey with no clear beginning or end point.
This is my picture of the past Ice Age. I've shaped the fragments of an enormous ice floe, to resemble countries forming themselves in the sea, moving around together to form patterns. There's a shape a bit like Australia (upside down) just above the mid point on the left hand side. Antarctica is right at the top.
In the OTEN notes, I read that In Victoria it has been shown that the Gariwerd people's rock shelters have been occupied since the last Ice Age, 22,000 years ago...
The Gariweard people lived in the Grampians, a place of special significance to me. It's where my maternal great granndmother Hannah Brown was born, and where my son Joe most loves to climb rocks. It's the place where he took me to camp out on the night after Mum's funeral, in 2001. How might I map this place, my connections within it, and its place in my life now? I will look for a geological map of where went, and talk with him about what we experienced there.
Bunjil's Shelter
One of the most important aboriginal rock art sites in the region this site depicts Bunjil, the traditional creator of the land, and his two dingoes. Bunjil was known as a good spirit who created things as they are today and gave the tribes their law and culture. 11 kilometres from Stawell and sign posted off the Stawell-Pomonal Road
Welcome to Victoria, http://www3.visitvictoria.com/displayObject.cfm/ ObjectID.00043955-3A4A-1A66-88CD80C476A90318/vvt.vhtml, accessed July 26, 2006
This was the place where I sat with my son the morning after Mum's funeral. Nobody else was around. There was a peaceful quiet. We talked about how little we really knew Mum's family. I know that some of our Irish ancestors came to Fryers Creek, very near this place. It was around the time of the great Irish famine, and things would have been tough for them there. Perhaps living on the land here was better for them than it had been in Ireland. They cam to Australian for reasons of survival.
July 27, 2006
Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for a very long time. Scientists, archaeologists and Aboriginal people have come together to reveal to the world evidence of early human occupation of Australia. New techniques used to date rock art, middens, bones and other things are pushing the estimated time of human habitation furher and further back, as far back as 176,000 years. About the findings made at Jinmium that point to this dating, Peter Tozer, the co-ordinator of the Waringari Aboriginal Corporation, said:
It will reinforce Aboriginal people's beliefs...Aboriginal people have the sense that they have been here forever. If you are dealing with those sorts of figures you might as well be talking about forever.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 September 1996, pp 29,32
THE DREAMTIMEThe Dreamtime, when the Rainbow serpent created the world, and The Dreaming began, continues into the present. It's not relevant for it to be measured in numbers. It's more something to be known about in the way a poem might be known. Stephen Muecke describes it this way:
THE DREAMTIMEThe "dreaming" is not a set of beliefs which is being lost because it is nolonger valid, it is rather a way of talking, of seeing, of knowing, and a set of practices, which is as obtuse, as mysterious and as beautiful as any poetry...it depends on people living in the country, travelling through it and naming it, constantly making new stories and songs.
Benterrak, K., Muecke, S., Roe, P., 1984, Reading the Country, p. 14, Freemantle Arts Centre Press
When an Aboriginal depicts a stretch of country he generally incorporates its mythical with its physical features, so stressing the inseparable interrelation between the two. Such paintings cannot be interpreted without inside knowledge, yet their emphasis on the spiritual attributes of places makes them doubly memorable to the initiated. If such an abstraction seems strange, it is well to remember that Western maps, too, are often stylized. Neither contour lines nor the soundings on a chart are physical realities. Again, the map-diagrams on Sydney suburban trains are quite as abstract as anything drawn by Aborigines.
Lewis, D. 1978, 'The Way of the Nomad', in From Earlier Fleets: Hemisphere, an Aboriginal Anthology, pp 78-82.
Above: Satellite image of North Balranald region annotated with Aboriginal Dreaming tracks. 1 ms. map: col.; 28.9 x 28.9 cm. Map Collection
I found a picture on the internet where an Aboriginal artist has drawn her map of a particular place, superimposed over a satellite image of the same location. It brings together two ways of looking at land: scientific and artistic. The artist, being Aboriginal, is drawing her dreamtime story over the land. She knows the land in a different way from the scientific observer. The satellite camera alone can only reproduce what light patterns it receives through its lens. This artist's lens has been shaped by the stories she knows, through a language that includes song, dance, and drawing. She sees through the surface appearance and into the past and present life of the land. You can see the relationship between the artwork and the photograph in the general shapes. The photograph can be read by a scientist, for geological and other information. The knowledge that artist depicts I can never fully know. It is her dreaming. I can respond to the beauty and energy of her forms, and learn to read the public symbols she uses, like waterholes and tracks, but her sacred knowledge is secret.
A Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM) data image...
...captured during January 2000 over the Balranald Mildura Region. At a resolution of 250 metres each image covers an area of approximately 185 x 185 kilometres, enabling one to see paddock-size parcels of land and the water bodies associated with the Darling River. Superimposed over the images is artist Tracey Andrews interpretation of Dreaming Tracks across the area. The maps, which were the working print for her exhibition,"Mapping Possibilities 2000", compiled with Lyn Moore, and held at the Mildura Arts Centre, are stunning examples of Indigenous interpretation of the Australian landscape, using a very modern, European image of the area as a base map.
Paddy Roe is an Elder from the Roebuck Plains area, east of Broome in Western Australia. Stephen Muecke (Benterrak, Muecke, Roe, 1984, p.173) describes Paddy Roe's role as being very specific to his relationship with his land and people in a similar way that intellectuals in Western communities have obligations specific to their communities. Muecke draws parallels between Aboriginal Elders and Western intellectuals, in that they are the ones who advise on knowledge specific to their cultures.
Paddy Roe can intervene on the behalf of his people in situtaions where Western laws conflict with Aboriginal Law.
Meuke makes the point that 'different cultures produce different sorts of truths which hold good only within their own systems'. Paddy Roe settled a particular dispute concerning a young couple, who were 'promised' to each since under Aboriginal Law, and perceived through Western law as practising an illegal relationship. Muecke describes Roe's approach this dispute as 'intellectual', in that he takes into account the 'cultural similarity and difference', acknowledging that Christianity, upon which Western marriage laws are based, and bugarrigarra (The Dreaming) have 'invisibility' in common. Neither culture can see the higher authorities (The Ancestral Spirits or God).
Around 1960 when I was a student at Glen Waverley Heights Primary School, paster Doug Nicholls came and talked to my class. He was introduced to us as an Aboriginal Elder. Sitting in the front row, I stared at him standing tall and authoritively in front of the blackboard, wearing a suit. His voice had the ring of someone with great knowledge. Although his culture was very different from ours, yet he meet us with warmth and understanding. He connected with us as a class, listening to us as we listened to him. I don't remember what he talked about exactly, but I we were spellbound. He had our attention. Clearly, he was a leader.
Paster Nicholls was an activist for Aboriginal rights. He worked on behalf of Aboriginal people all over Australia, as a founding member of the 1932 Australian Aborigines League:
William Cooper founded the Australian Aborigines League in 1932. Other members included Shadrach James, Kaleb Morgan, Pastor Doug Nicholls and Eric and William Onus. It was the first Aboriginal organisation with all Aboriginal members. The aims of the League were to gain the human and civil rights for Aboriginal people that they were being denied. This organisation was the forerunner of the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League that was formed in 1957. (Ngankat-kalo: Aboriginal Education)
Ideally, the roles of leaders in the world today, are to:
Model appropriate personal, social and environmental behaviours
Listen to other people
Demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of history
Demonstrate their belief in the strength and intelligence of themselves and others
Inspire and encourage others to be actively involved in society
Work towards a world that celebrates difference
What are the responsibilities and/or obligations expected of Aboriginal people to each other, land, and totems?
Like everything in Aboriginal culture, these things are interconnected.
The most startling realisation I have from reading through the notes provided on this subject is how much we have to learn from ancient Aboriginal knowledge, for our survival now. The rituals serve the purpose of survival itself, and without the knowledge, memorised and passed down through the arts of story, song, dance and image, all will be lost.
A Mnemonicis something we compose to help us remember something, a song, an image, a rhythm - anything that we attach to a piece of information that helps us remember. Aboriginal knowledge is passed down through such devices. We all learn differently, with different preferred modes of receiving and responding to information. I'm a visual and kinaesthtic learner; I like to see, feel and make things. Learning for me is a process of gathering together fragments of material to make connections between them. Patterns emerge over time. I arrange the fragments in various ways until they make sense to me, yet aware that there's always going to be another way of looking at the fragments. That's why I like keeping journals; I can write and draw the fragments. Doing an on-line journal is good because I can also get to rearrange the bits as I collect them and see new connections. Learning more about Aboriginal culture, which is itself a body of knowledge alive with layers of interconnections and patterns, has been an eye-opener for me. I didn't expect to become so interested in the learning process itself, which is at the heart of it.
Every fragment of knowledge passed on by the Ancestral Spirits connects people to their responsibilities to each other, the animals and to the land.
TOTEM
Totemism is a form of spiritual belief in which a group of people or individuals are spiritually linked to the Ancestral Spirits, to other people, to nature, to animals and the elements.(L G, p.10)
and...
Aboriginal people have responsibilities to each other:
Marraiges between those of the same skin group are forbidden. Those of the same skin are descended from the same Spirit Ancestor, and are considered to close genealogically and spiritually. It is forbidden because it can cause 'chaos, conflict and the breakdown on relationships.'(L G, p.62) On a purely practical level, abiding by this law would avoid possible genetic complications which arise when people too closely related to each other have children.
Formal sharing is a compulsory activity for Aboriginal people; it has nothing to do with sentiment or preference but is a way or reaffirming the all-important reciprocal obligation on which Aboriginal society depends. There are numerous Dreamtime stories that tell of severe penalties for not sharing.
Could the Mount Wilson Dreamtime story of the volcano erupting be one of these stories? Could it be that the land was punishing the people of the 'big camp' for not sharing with the approaching Hunter Valley tribe?
If someone gives something to someone, that person must give in exchange. This is the Aboriginal law of reciprocity.
Men and women were given clearly defined yet interdependent roles by their Spirit Ancestors. These roles defined their actions in both the physical and spiritual dimensions. Men hunted, and the women gathered food. Both made things that could be used to trade with other people. Women raised the children,teaching them the ways of the land, and survival. Their spiritual roles involved 'Men's business' and 'women's business'. These involve rituals exclusive to each sex, and together are important for perpetuating the Law. LG, p. 65
Men maintained and passed on 'the most important sacred stories, rituals and objects'.LG, p. 65. Young boys were tr(L G, p.67)ained and initiated by the men, and each given a new manhood name. Woman practised secret sacred rituals about puberty, personal welfare and love, healing and fertility on the land and on Dreaming happenings.
It makes ethical sense to organise a society in which everyone has a clear and valued role. It makes for a society where people are working towards the survival and well- being of everyone, rather than just themselves.
A Law of reciprocity applies to land as well as to people. At places where Aboriginal men perform increase rites that are sacred to the spirit of a particular species of animal, it's forbidden to kill that animal anywhere around that site. Women who dig up yams always leave some shoots in the ground so that the vegetable can regenerate.
Where is there rock art in Australia?
Rock art that I have seen is in The Grampians, Victoria, Hawksbury area, Sydney, and a place in Queensland whose name I need to look up. People I know have seen rock art in Kakadu National Park, Arnhem Land.
I need to find maps of these sites, and some information on who owns this knowledge.
Knowledge is passed on through rituals.
The Aboriginal people who created the rock art we see today, were enacting a sacred ritual. Drawing, like song and dance, is a language for passing on knowledge.
Dreaming stories are expressed in story, songs, dances, art, corroborees and daily life. All relate to the Dreaming and are conceived as reproductions of works that were created by Spirit Ancestors.(L G, p.74)
The Dreaming is central to understanding
Bibliography
Sheridan, J. & Tranter, J. 2000, Aspects of Cultural Studies A Learner's Guide, Open Training and Education Network, Sydney.
Isaacs, J. 1987 Australian Dreaming, 40,000 Years of Aboriginal History, Lansdowne Press, Sydney.
Benterrak, Mueke, Roe 1984 Reading the Country, Freemantle Arts Centre Press
Ngankat-kalo: Aboriginal Education , http://www.vaeai.org.au/timeline/1901.html [Online accessed 21 August 2006]
