Explain the Centrality of the Dreaming and Its Importance for Aboriginal Spirituality

Source 1 displays a Indigenous prayer ceremony to prepare for Christmas. The ceremony is influenced by Aboriginal culture such as their connection with the land and the spirits of the First Peoples. For Aborigines “all objects are living and share the same soul and spirit as them”. Spirituality is heavily incorporated into the everyday lives of Aboriginals. Spirituality can be defined as the sense of a connection to something bigger than yourself and involves a search for the meaning of life.

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,

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

The Land in every aspect sustains aboriginal lives, spiritually, physically, socially and culturally. The concept of landscape as a second skin is central to every aboriginal art form, whether it is dance, music or painting.

The land rights movement is of critical importance for Aboriginal spirituality, as the Dreaming is inextricably linked to the land. With many Aboriginal people having lost their spiritual links with the land as a result of European settlement, the land rights movement has been necessary to help Aboriginal people re-establish their sacred connection with the land.

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).

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.

Aboriginal spirituality is directly linked to dreaming. The dreaming is the term which refers to the past, future and present of Aboriginal spirituality. The dreaming grasps the Aboriginal ideas of creation. It is the foundation on which the Aboriginal religion is built upon. The impacts of dispossession on Aboriginal spiritualties concerning separation from the land, the stolen generation and separation from kinship group is discussed. Departure from the land started with the European settlement. It removed the sense of belonging and sense of spiritual identity. One of the first forms of dispossession even date back to when the first fleet arrived in 1778. The removal of Aboriginal people from their land had a detrimental effect on their spirituality

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 Dreaming: Aboriginal spirituality relies on the dreaming to describe the "fundamental reality" of aboriginals past, present and future. Aboriginals concept of time was and is different to the modern western society. They believe the concept of dreaming began at the beginning of creation and repeats through every generation- "the dreaming began at the dawn of time, remains bound up in the present, and will endure forever." As the dreaming is still present today in Aboriginal spirituality, it shows how the dreaming connecting adherents to their law, customs, spirituality through the paradigms of song, dance, art and rituals. For example, The 'Be' story that comes from the Dalabon country explains the connection between animals and humans

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?

The belief in kinship with creation is widely supported within most indigenous religions. In this way of thinking, there is more importance placed on the concept of “we” than there is on the concept of “I”. Here, the family or village is where strong emphasis lies. In many indigenous traditions, developing and maintaining a respectful relationship with spiritual energy is paramount. This concept doesn’t only apply to humans, but also, in many cases to the immediate natural environment as well. The oneness of the body and the land is vital. Many think of themselves as mere ‘caretakers’ of the earth, and nothing more, who has a duty to nurture and preserve it for future generations. Certain animals are seen as spiritual conduits, just as certain trees are seen to impart herbal healing secrets.

These myths and rituals were also a source of inspiration for much aboriginal art, including paintings, carved objects, symbolic weapons and poetic chants. The forms of art varied according to region, with differences in the decoration of objects and weapons depending on local myths and traditions.