The Dreaming Is The Way The Aboriginal Understand About The World Through The Great Creative Stories

A great sense of trust supports this mutual ‘give-take’ relationship. ‘If you take care of country, country will take care of you.’ These beliefs are totemist and animist, which basically means Aboriginals perceive all natural objects to possess a spirit or soul. While totems are quite significant within Aboriginal culture as they act as symbols in a system of beliefs, signifying a relationship between an individual or group and an animal or plant. Thus, creating a link between the human, natural and supernatural worlds. As the word ‘totem’ comes from a Native American language where it represents group membership; and literally means is ‘he/she/it is a relative of mine’.

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).

Anthony Eaton’s a new Kind of Dreaming helps the reader to recognise the various challenges and conflicts that cause the characters to change and grow. Anthony Eaton best expresses Jamie as an outsider that is trying to find his place in the world, while uncovering the secrets of Port Barren’s shady past. This changes Jamie from an adolescent delinquent to a responsible and admirable person. Jaime develops friendships that lead him to trusting and sympathetic qualities that are unusual for him in his past of crime. Jamie faces a challenge to build a stronger relationship with Cameron, but this is an obstacle for Cameron as he tries to understand Jamie and

Hello and welcome to ST Leo’s justice group my name is charbel saliba and I will be talking to you about aboriginal dreaming and land rights. The quote I said earlier was a spiritual view of life based on the dreaming which cannot be separated from the land; that is why the aboriginal people’s connection towards the land is inexorable. The two are intertwined; to separate them would be impossible, one would not work without the other thus they are just as important. The land is used as a physical link between human beings and all that is unseen and eternal. It creates a

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).

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

For Aboriginal Australians, the land has a special significance that is rarely understood by those of European descent. The land, or country, does not only sustain Aborigines in material ways, such as providing food and shelter, it also plays a major role in their spiritual lives. As Rose put it, "Land provides for my physical needs and spiritual needs." (1992, p.106). To use Rose 's own term, to Aboriginals the land is a 'nourishing terrain '. (1996, p.7).

The Tlingit Community House is an example of the totem of Tlingit (Frank, 2014). A symbolic of animal form that is laid out in a two-dimensional abstract pattern, with an extensive gently slanted roof, attractively painted façade (Frank, 2014). The flat surfaces of the Tlingit Community House show geometric shapes of beavers, bears, also whales, and ravens. Furthermore, the totem pole in the center contains stacked images that help a family are a clan to reminisce about their history back to mythological periods (Frank, 2014). Also, the Tlingit community house is characteristic of the art and style of that region (Frank, 2014). However, a totem is an object such as an animal or plant that operates as a symbol of a family or tribe (Frank,

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

While tying the idea of society and the environment surrounding it to the ideals of the sacred and the profane, this could be directly connected to Durkheim’s views on totemism and mana. Totemism can be defined as, “a system of belief in which humans are said to have kinship or a mystical relationship with a spirit-being, such as an animal or plant. The entity, or totem, is thought to interact with a given kin group or an individual and to serve as their emblem or symbol” (Haekel 2009). In Durkheim’s idea, totems could ultimately represent anything and although they may seem insignificant to one religion or society, the totem may give another one great religious feelings (Durkheim 153). Durkheim continues on, discussing the totem as both a

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

Different Aboriginal groups have a common characteristic and that is that they have a similar belief system which is called the ʻDreamingʼ. The dreaming may be well known as a religious system but it does not always convey its true eminence. However it does convey a sense of enlightenment through visions and dreams. The dreaming provides a strong bondage between The Aboriginal people and their land and identity. In the Indigenous community, Aboriginal people learned about their environment before they were able to identify the characteristics of animals, plants, sources of food and water, useful materials and the weather. The stories that they tell provide them with a map of their environment and information such as trade routes and resources. With the knowledge they had due to their access to information about their land led them to know how to travel successfully around the Australian landscape which then enhanced their imagination that helped them compose more dreamtime stories. The Aboriginal people are introduced to the spiritual world through the dreaming stories which are important teachings that make up their identity.The Aboriginal people travelled the same routes through the lands that their ancestors once used, these are called the dreaming trails. This strengthens their communication with the ancestors and are able to build on their relationship with their land and identity.

In Australia there is a religion practiced by the aboriginal people called Animism. Animism is the attribution of a soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena. Another definition is power that organizes and animates the material universe. These aboriginal people practice animism, especially in what they believe is the period of time when the world was created, which they call Dreamtime. They believe everything in the world not only has a soul but is related to them through the creator that made the world- the Rainbow Serpent.

Oral histories are rendering the cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. This includes stories from the dreamtime ; these as such of our history, culture and future. Stories from the dreamtime are spiritual narratives of Ancestral Beings walking the earth, creating people and landscaping across Australia. They impart systems of law, a set of values and beliefs for each Indigenous language forum. These stories can be conveyed through artworks, dance