Aboriginal Dreaming

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.”

Kinship ties also give the responsibility of passing knowledge of the Dreaming from Elders to other generations. The Dreaming is communicated at different degrees depending on a person’s age and their position within the community. Learning about and sharing the Dreaming is a life long journey.

The Australian Indigenous community hold extremely significant corrections to the land of Australia, of which they refer to as ‘Country.’ Indigenous people acquire deep meaning from the land, sea and the countless resources derived from them. This special relationship has formed for many centuries. To them ‘Country’ is paramount for overall wellbeing; the strong, significant, spiritual bonds embody their entire existence. Knowledge is continually passed down to create an unbroken connection of past,

Buddhism has a concern for the environment because if the environment is in danger then there is no harmony for all living things. In order for all living things to live in harmony one must take care of the environment. Buddhism stated that man himself can be polluted psychological, and if he is then he would pollute the world because of this. One must be unpolluted within to stop pollution on the earth to have harmony for all living

Dreams are also a guide in Ojibway culture, " 'one of the things that elders tell you nowadays to try real hard to remember, write them down even to help you. '" (Wagamese 252). It is believe that through dreams one receives visions that are " 'sent to them by the spirit world. That vision could be just about anything and was meant to be a sacred and private thing for the seeker. Gave a direction for their life. '" (252). Dreams are believed to be important messages that provide one with " 'direction and strength '"(252).

The Dreaming stories pass on important knowledge, cultural values and belief systems to later generations. This is done by song, dance, storytelling and painting. Indigenous Australians have maintained links to The Dreaming dating back from ancient times up to the present, providing a very rich cultural heritage. The role that The Dreaming plays in Indigenous Australian life is very important to this culture as it holds big significance of how Indigenous Australians and their culture came to be.

These philosophical ways of being and abiding by are supported by the Dreamtime. The Dreamtime can be explained as ‘how the world came to be’ for Australia’s First People, centered around ‘how people must conduct their behavior and social relations’ (Broome, 2002, p. 19). There are estimated to be 600 different Indigenous countries that exist amongst the Australian continent, all with different ways of ‘doing’ (Edwards, 1998). The Dreaming is an important way of passing on knowledge, cultural values and belief systems from generation to generation (Australian Government, 2015). The deep connection that Aboriginal people have to their land is also an important concept relation to the concept of The Dreaming. The land is where the events of the dreaming occurred, with the spirit beings of The Dreaming, forming sacred parts of the Australian landscape (Edwards, 1998, p. 81). This spiritual way of being is also linked to elaborate laws of kinship (Phillips, 2005).

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

Indigenous people are dependant on their knowledge and understanding for the survival of their land. They needed to know the seasons and when and where the various types of food are available. The land needs to be protected to ensure the survival of the land. They do this by passing on knowledge of the land and its creation through stories, songs, ceremonies, dances and art. The closest English word for this knowledge of the land and its creation is the Dreaming. The Dreaming is a unifying characteristic of all Indigenous culture, but each group within Australia had its own particular Dreaming. The Dreaming of a group explained how features of their world came to be; the dreaming explained the sacred sites and their importance. It also set out the rules of how people should behave, particularly towards the land. The Dreaming gave meaning and direction to the lives of each Indigenous group, and continues to do so.

The land is a pivotal medium through which the Dreaming is communicated. Hence, when the High Court of Australia ruled that Australia’s land was occupied at the time of British settlement and overturned the notion of ‘Terra Nullius’, deeming it legally invalid, the opportunity was granted for Indigenous Australians to re-establish spiritual links with the land and their cultural

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.

To better understand Aboriginals as a Dream Culture I want to give more insight into Aboriginal Australians general culture and their conceptions of “Dream Time.” In his discussion of religion, Mircea Eliade describes a concept of Cosmos vs Chaos (Eliade 1957). In this notion an unordered world is chaotic only until is it transposed during a sacred time: “By occupying it and, above all, by settling in it, man symbolically transforms it into a cosmos though a ritual repetition of the cosmogony” (Eliade 1957:31). In other words until a land is tamed or created it is considered unordered. This can be applied to Aboriginal’s understanding of the world prior to their current presence. Aboriginals believe that in a time before the Dreamings, the land and world was a featureless earth. It was not until the dreamtime, or time of creation: “where there is contact with appearances from both realms of inside the earth itself as from ill-defined upper region” that the earth began to have its composed landscapes (Cowan 1992:26). The Dream Time is not only a period but more of a dimension where ancestral beings moved across the earth and created not only land, but every aspect of the earth including animals, plants, and man. It is important to realize that the ancestors created the natural earth and that is why Aboriginals live a particular lifestyle. Most Aboriginals living in this cosmogony are hunter-gatherer tribes. This aspect of their life can be traced to stem from the idea of

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?

In an excerpt taken from his 1953 publication titled, The Dreaming and Other Essays, W.E. H. Stanner mentions that an Indigenous Australian may refer to “the place from which his spirit came his Dreaming,” additionally, “he may also explain the existence of a custom or law of life as casually due to ‘The Dreaming’” (Stanner 1953:23). Here, Stanner not only exposes the multiplicity of Dreaming but, also, its implications on the Aborigine. The Dreaming is the larger context or the background against which they orient

It is clear from these beliefs that spirituality and religion played a major role in the Aboriginal culture. There were many myths and rituals connected to both the tribe's ancestors and the creators of the world, none of whom ever died but merged with the natural world and thus remained a part of the present. These myths and rituals, signifying communion with nature and the past, were known as the Dreaming or the Dreamtime, and reflected a belief in the continuity of existence and harmony with the world.