Dreaming (spirituality)

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This article is about Australian Aboriginal cosmogony, cosmology and spirituality. For other meanings of the word 'dreaming', see dreaming (disambiguation).

Dreaming is a common term among Indigenous Australians for a personal, or group, creation and for what may be understood as the "timeless time" of formative creation and perpetual creating, as well as for the places and localities on Indigenous Australian traditional land (and throughout non-traditional Australia) where the uncreated creation spirits and totemic ancestors, or genius loci, reside. Other groups have pointed out there is no one English word that covers the concept, for example those Anangu that speak Pitjantjatjara use the word Tjukurpa and those that speak Yankunytjatjara use Wapar, but neither means dreaming.[1]

The Dreaming has different meanings for different Aboriginal groups. The Dreaming can be seen as an embodiment of creation which gives meaning to everything. It establishes the rules governing relationships between the people, the land and all things for Aboriginal people.[2]

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[edit] Origin of the term and definitions

The term was made popular by anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner, after an Aboriginal man had told him "white man got no Dreaming", which Stanner subsequently entitled one of his books.[3]

However, many argue it is an inadequate translation of the concept – from the Arrernte word, "Altyerre" – a concept largely unrelated to the European notion of dreams.

Even Stanner preferred the term "everywhen", while T.G.H. Strehlow favoured "Eternal, Uncreated".

Robyn Davidson, in her recent Quarterly Essay on nomads, writes:

One could say that the Dreaming is a spiritual realm which saturates the visible world with meaning; that it is the matrix of being; that it was the time of creation; that it is a parallel universe which may be contacted via the ritual performance of song, dance and painting; that it is a network of stories of heroes – the forerunners and creators of contemporary man.
During the creation period, the ancestral beings made journeys and performed deeds; they fought, loved, hunted, behaved badly or well, rather like the Greek gods, and where they camped or hurled spears or gave birth, tell-tale marks were left in the earth. While creating this topography, they were morphing constantly from animal to human and back to animal, again rather like the Greeks.
They made separate countries, but interlaced them (related them) with their story tracks. They created frameworks for kin relations. Many different ancestors created a country, by travelling across it and meeting each other. In that way, a particular country is shared by all creatures who live there, their essences arising from the Dreaming, and returning to it. Some Dreamings crossed many countries, interacting with local ones as they went, and connecting places far from each other. Thus the pulse of life spreads, blood-like, through the body of the continent – node/pathway, node/pathway – as far as, and sometimes into, the sea.
At the end of that epoch, exhausted by their work, they sank back into the ground at sacred sites, where their power remains in condensed forms.
It is not quite right, however, to say that the creation period is in the past, because it is a past that is eternal and therefore also present. Ancestors sink back into, but also emerge from and pass through, sites. In other words, an ancestor's journey, or story, became a place, and that place holds past, present and future simultaneously.
For traditionally oriented Aboriginal people, the historical past lies a couple of generations back and always will. The Dreaming encompasses and surrounds this time of living memory, which sinks into it. Time sinks into place, into Country.
Each sacred site contains a potentially limitless supply of the particular species left there by an ancestor. But in order to ensure their continued generation, ceremonial action is required. If this isn't done, or isn't done properly, that life-form will eventually disappear [a term Aboriginal people call Looking after Country]. Children, too, are born from the ancestor's spirit which arises out of its place to impregnate a woman. Such children belong to and have responsibility for that place, and will return to it after death, so that its life potential isn't dissipated.
Not only did the mythical ancestors give the world its shape, they imbued it with moral and social structures – handing down laws whereby all humans have intrinsic value and a share of goods. Living by these laws invigorates the life-force surging and burgeoning through the land. In fact, to sing a ritual song is to move that ancestor along through the land. Earth is sacred, sentient stuff; it is not a counterpoint to heaven. Heaven and earth are embedded together, on the same plane. A country is saturated in consciousness. It recognises and responds to people. It depends on people.[4]

While Dreaming stories are considered to have been passed down from time immemorial, some would appear to have evolved quite recently. For example, some Western Desert and Central Australian peoples have Pujikat Dreamings ("pussycat": Felis catus, the feral domestic cat which has populated most parts of Australia since white arrival and which is often hunted and eaten by Aboriginal people).[5]

[edit] Ownership of Dreamings

The world was created during the Dreamtime and a Dreaming is a story owned by different tribes and their members that explains the creation of life, people and animals. A Dreaming story is passed on protectively as it is owned and is a form of "intellectual property". In the modern context, an Aborigine cannot relate, or paint some one else's dreaming or creation story without prior permission of the Dreaming owner. Someone's dreaming story must be respected as they hold the knowledge to that Dreaming story, leading to certain behavioural constraints, with accusations of "stealing" someone else's Dreaming if it is painted without authorisation.

The late Geoffrey Bardon's three books on Papunya specifically mention the conflict and possession of a dreaming story; the Honey Ant Dreaming painted on the school walls of Papunya.

When the mural was being painted, there had to be agreement among all tribes in Papunya (the Pintupi, Warlpiri, Arrernte, Anmatyerre) that the honey ant was an acceptable mural, since Papunya is the meeting place for all tribes.

After the mural was painted, one of the senior elders, Long Tom Onion, went to Bardon and forcefully reminded him that it was his suggestion the mural be painted. Later, Bardon realised Long Tom Onion owned that Dreaming and thus the importance of Dreaming ownership among Indigenous Australians, especially those who still retain their tribal and traditional connections.

Among the Central Desert tribes of Australia, the passing of the Dreaming story is for the most part gender-related. For example, the late artist from the Papunya movement, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, painted ceremonial dreamings relating to circumcision and love stories, and lessons for "naughty boys". His daughters, Gabriella Possum and Michelle Possum have tended to paint the "Seven Sisters" Dreaming or the Pleiades as they inherited that Dreaming through the maternal line. Consequently, they have painted their "Grandmother's Country" which is an expression of their inherited ownership of the land through knowledge of the dreamings. Clifford and his daughters have not painted the same subjects; Clifford has never painted the "Seven Sisters Dreaming" and in tribal law, his daughters are not allowed to see male tribal ceremonies, let alone paint them.

Dreamings as "property" have also been used by a few Aboriginal tribes to argue before the High Court of Australia their title over their traditional tribal land. Paintings of Dreamings, travelling journeys and ceremonies tend to depict the locations where they occur. There have been cases where massive 10-metre long paintings have been presented before the Court, presented as the tribe's title deed after terra nullius was struck down during the tenure of Chief Justice Gerard Brennan.

[edit] Artists and their Dreamings

  • Gabriella Possum Nungurayyi owns the following Dreaming stories: bush foods, Grandmother's country and the Seven Sisters.
  • Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri had the following Dreaming: death ceremony

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Park: Tjukurpa environment.gov.au, 2006-06-23
  2. ^ Source: http://www.dreamtime.net.au/indigenous/glossary.cfm (accessed: Friday, 16 March 2007)
  3. ^ Stanner,W.E.H., White Man Got No Dreaming: Essays 1938-1973, 1979, ISBN 0-7081-1802-X. Canberra, 1979
  4. ^ Davidson, Robyn, No Fixed Address: Nomads and the fate of the planet, Quarterly Essay, Issue 24, 2006, p14-15, ISBN 186-395-286-1
  5. ^ CLC | Our Land
  • Bardon, G. and Bardon, J. (2005) Papunya: The Story After the Place, Melbourne: University of Melbourne, Miegunyah Press
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