Essay On Aboriginal Dreaming

Aboriginal philosophy is known as the Dreaming and is based on the inter-relation of all people and all things. The past of the Spirit Ancestors which live on in the legends are handed down through stories, art, ceremony and songs.

The Dreaming explains the origin of the universe and workings of nature and humanity. It shapes and structures life through the regulation and understanding of family life, the relations between the sexes and obligations to people, land and spirits. Aboriginal people disclose their Dreaming stories to pass on imperative knowledge, cultural values, traditions and law to future generations. Their Dreamings are passed on through various customs such as ceremonial body painting, storytelling song and dance.

The Australian Indigenous people have

When we try to explain in English their philosophy we are perhaps best not to use the term ‘Dreamtime’ but use the word ‘Dreaming’ instead.

It conveys better the timeless concept of moving from ‘dream’ to reality which in itself is an act of creation and the basis of many Aboriginal creation myths.

Aboriginal spirituality does not think about the ‘Dreaming’ as a time past, in fact not as a time at all. Time refers to past, present and future but the ‘Dreaming’ is none of these.

The ‘Dreaming’ “is there with them, it is not a long way away. The Dreaming is the environment that the Aboriginals lived in, and it still do today. It is important to note that the Dreaming always also comprises the significance of place.

The Dreaming, or ‘Tjukurrpa’, also means to ‘see and understand the law’ as it is translated from the Arrernte language (Frank Gillen with Baldwin Spencer, translating an Arrernte word Altyerrenge).

In most stories of the Dreaming, the Ancestor Spirits came to the earth in human form and as they moved through the land, they created the animals, plants, rocks, rivers, mountains and other forms of the land that we know