What is the Dreaming in Indigenous Australia?

Scarred Trees are important sign posts

‘The Dreaming’, an English term coined by Francis Gillen in 1896, was adopted by Spencer & Gillen

(1899) to refer to a period in the religious mythologies of the Northern Arunta people in the Northern Terri-

tory (Dean, 1996).

This term is frequently misinterpreted, as it has nothing to do with dreaming in the context of sleep. According to Dean (1996), the Dreaming is viewed by some Aboriginal groups (e.g. the Tiwi and Wuradjeri) as the period during the creation of the world when totemic ancestors came into being, representing a past reality.

For other groups, it represents a past, current and future reality, either concurrently parallel to our own reality (e.g. the Ooldea and Warrabri), or within our own reality (e.g. the Murinbata and Mardudjara).

In some cases, such as during ritual ceremonies, the past can become the present, so the term ‘Dreamtime’ used in an all-encompassing sense is not accurate, as it denotes a linear timeline, separating past, present, and future.

While oral traditions are a component of the Dreaming, they cannot be thought of purely as mythology. In a general sense, the ‘Dreaming’ is the embodiment of Aboriginal culture, which includes the songs, stories, and oral traditions, dance, art and ceremonial practices, laws and traditions, magical practices and religion, and a complex social structure.

Traditional knowledge is handed down primarily through oral tradition and typically involves a moral charter. Much of this knowledge is considered sacred and secret and is not shared with non-Aboriginal people. Even within the community, some information is secret to men, some is secret to women, and some is secret only to initiated individuals.

This is all part of a complex social structure that has been an integral aspect of Aboriginal cultures for tens of thousands of years (cf. Ross, 1986).|

Images @ Eminpee Fotography