Aboriginal Beliefs Essay

For the Aborigines their spiritually involves everyday objects such as plants and animals which are connected to their ancestors. Their spirituality and beliefs are kept alive by passing on their knowledge through ceremonies and “Dreamtime” stories. The “Dreamtime” stories are how the Aborigines explain the beginning of the Earth and the foundation of their core beliefs. In most of the stories, ancestral spirits came to the Earth and as they moved along they created the plants, animals and even rocks. One the spirits did their job, they morphed into stars, watering holes and other objects. An example of these “Dreamtime” stories is the “Rainbow serpent” which is about a serpent who “pushed out the land to make mountains, she spilled water over the land to make rivers, lakes and billabongs. She also made the sun and fire, and all colours of the rainbow.”

Rituals involve acting out events or instructions expressed in the myths, mythology substantiating, justifying or explaining a range of rituals. The most common content of myths has to do with matters that are of great importance to humans, life, death, fertility and relations between people and nature. The Aborigines had a nourishing economy, being dependent on animals and plants provided by nature, with no crop plants or domesticated livestock to fall back on. Being subsistence hunter-gatherers, they depended entirely on being able to find food every day. So increase rituals would be expected to be part of their religious life, performing ceremonies believed to ensure the continuation of their food supply, the availability of water,

All aboriginals are linked to the Dreamtime through their totemic creation ancestors, whose stories are passed on through generations. Just as they would care for their family or tribe, they are obliged to care for their ancestral spirits existing in their land. It is important to remember that ancestral spirits are not necessarily ‘Gods’, but instead they are natural features of the land. As the Ancestor Spirits travelled the land, they taught the Law. When Aboriginals say they have a spiritual connection to the land, this relationship exists through the Law developed at the period of formation that includes a system of totemism. A totemic being represents the original form of an animal, plant or other object as it was in the Creation Period. The Kumbumerri Yugambeh people’s totem is the Eagle. ‘What is meant by totemism in Aboriginal Australia is always a mystical connection, expressed by symbolic devices and maintained by rules, between living persons, whether as individuals or as groups or as stocks, and other existents—their ‘totems’ —within an ontology of life that in Aboriginal understanding depends for order and continuity on maintaining the identities and associations which exemplify the connection.’ (5.3) Totems not only create a sense of belonging and spiritual connectedness to the land and others in the tribe, but they also offer hints to the person's

Spirituality often can be classified to an ultimate or immaterial reality or inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of their being; or the deepest values and meanings by which people live. This can be true for the aboriginal people, whose concept of spirituality is derived from the concept of the Dreaming, where the roots lie in a variety of stories, ceremonies, values and structures. In the beginning many people held on to what ever they could, holding on to their idea of themselves a connection to the families that they left behind. However, in order to wipe away any thought or lingering feelings “many masks, regalia. And ritual artifacts were confiscated and burned as pagan works of the devil- or simply held and later sold for profit.”[7] This was devastating as many lost whatever connection they had to the outside world, their families and their spirituality. While in residential schools “Children were taught that the beliefs of their

The Dreaming can be described as Aboriginal creative epoch and each language group have their own values and beliefs, and what associates with it. (Edwards, 1998, p.79). For example, Kamilaroi of Northern NSWs nation explores the spiritual connections through a name called Baiame, known as ‘All Father” who they believe is the supernatural ancestor and creator of earth. Baiame’s stories of creation are shared from generation to generation of

The Aboriginal Dreaming refers to the religious and spiritual beliefs of the aboriginal people of Australia. The dreaming is what they base their traditional lives around, the dreaming determines their values and beliefs and their relationships with the animals, plants and environment around them. The Dreaming tells the stories that explain their views and beliefs on how the world came to be and its history and the totems which represent each historical factor of the dreaming. The dreaming stories explain how the Spirit Ancestors made the trees, rocks, waterholes, and rivers, mountains and stars as well as the animals and plants, and which spirits

Aboriginal spirituality has it that the spirits of unborn children (jilmas) are present in the land, usually in sacred waterholes. By dreaming, the child 's father brings its spirit into the mother 's body. Children are not born from the physical joining of the parents, but from the spiritual joining of both the parents and the land. From this, we can see that Aboriginals attribute their very existence to the land.

Aboriginals or indigenous Australians are the native people of Australia. Aboriginals were nomadic people who came to Australia about 40,000 – 60,000 years ago from Southeast Asia. Religion is a great part of Aboriginal culture. The essay answers these questions: What do Aboriginals belief? What is a Kinship system? What is Dreaming and Dreamtime? What rituals does Aboriginals have?

Myths play a large role in Native American totem poles, this is not really a surprise because Native people believed in more superstitious things. They believed that many living beings in nature had either spirits or gods. With these outlooks on nature and life, those beliefs came back to their carvings on totem poles. Respecting spirits and gods of the land was huge for Native Americans, such as showing

Both Aboriginal and Christian only begun with two people (Adam and Eve) or two tribes. Both religions believe in a supernatural being, Aboriginals believe in Ancestral and Creator beings, and the Christians believing in God. The Christians believe that God created the Earth, whereas the Aboriginals narrate through dreamtime stories that Guthi-Guthi created the earth. The Aboriginal and Christian creation stories both explain that we have responsibilities for the things created by God or spirit including themselves. Discuss in what ways can the Holy spirit’s presence be seen in Aboriginal Spiritually Christianity has had a strong impact on Aboriginal society influencing their spirituality in various ways.

Different First Nations have their own methods of designing and carving totem poles. The Haida, for example, are known to carve creatures with huge eyes, where some would typically have narrow eyes. The Coast Salish tend to carve representations of people on their house posts, where others tend to carve supernatural beings on their poles. And all of these totem poles represent a very special and important parts of an aboriginal person.

The ceremonial dresses can vary from region to region but usually includes body paint, ornamental coverings, and brightly colored feathers. The body decoration is said to be related to kin and other relationships. Some of the Australian groups hold their dances secret and sacred. Also, gender was very important in some of the ceremonies, men and women would have separate ceremonial traditions. Many of their ceremonies took place on stages so it could be a part of a longer process lasting over many years.

I did not have any previous knowledge on Oceanic religions so I was delighted to learn about the many sacred indigenous traditions found in Oceania. What I found interesting was the religious diversity that exists within the regions of Oceania. The text discussed how cultural beliefs and practices differ among the Aborigines and the cultures that resides in Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. For example, traditional Melanesian religions hold spiritual goals different from those of Micronesia and Polynesia. According to Bilhartz, the central purpose for the Melanesian religion is " to provide for the collective material well-being of the peoples", whereas the religions in other regions of the Pacific seek to uphold and maintain sacred and social order for the protection of the people (2006, p. 405). Another difference is that Melanesian culture tends toward egalitarianism among the males and they place great emphasis in deities that guard tribal zones even though the notion of a high God exists. In contrast, the deities and the structure

Australian Aborigines are thought to have the longest continuous cultural history in the world. Yet, within a hundred years, the near extinction of the Aboriginal culture almost occurred. This single event, the invasion of the Australian continent by European settlers, changed the lifestyle, the culture, and the fate of Australian Aborigines. Their entire lives were essentially taken away and they were forced into a white, European world where the lifestyle change could not have been any different. Aborigines in Australia today are struggling to deal with a past in which they lost touch with their culture and now are trying to regain some of that cultural identity.

The indigenous people did not communicate about their beliefs with the written form, but instead, would "keep these alive through oral traditions" (The Primal Religions). Those who are embedded in one place become one with their surroundings and feel a responsibility to look after a place where they are rooted. The aboriginal religion is one that has been around for a long time. The aboriginal people, also known as Arunta lived an embedded life and lived a life miming their ancestors. There were three noted religion characteristics which were known among the indigenous people. The first one is "characteristics among the primal religions", a second is "characteristics among the primal religions" and the third is "a view of reality as an eternal