Advertisement
Published: December 27th 2007
DISCLAIMER: In no way are we experts with regard to all this, there is much that we still don't quite understand and much more still to learn. Therefore if we write something that is incorrect or doesn't make sense and someone out there can correct us or make something clearer, by all means get in touch. What we write is based solely on what we read and what we were told by various informed people, particularly from the Kakadu and Uluru regions.
Dreamtime
The central concept of Aboriginal culture, philosophy and belief is that of "the Dreaming" or "Dreamtime" (translation). It is something which seems to be regarded as having separate parts but at the same time is holistic as well; it is certainly not easily definable from a western point of view. The concept may also vary slightly from tribe to tribe across Australia, plus some aboriginal groups regard "Dreamtime" as an inadequate translation which fails to convey its true manner. For instance the
Pitjantjatjara and
Yankunyjatjara tribes around the area of Uluru call it
Tjukurpa as they believe it is not something that is imaginary or fleeting as "Dreamtime" would suggest, indeed it is very real.
It is important to recognize the difference, even in terms of space and time, in how aboriginal people see the world to possibly begin to understand the way they live and the "Dreaming" concept. For instance they regard time as not being measured by a linear timeline where the past, present and future are separate in the western sense. The "Dreamtime", "the Forever" or "Tjukurpa" which is their religious heritage, law, history, the land, instructions on living and surviving, moral system, ancestral creation beings and essentially their reality is seen in terms of having the past, present and future all rolled into one. They are not separate, so essentially the past is happening now as is the future! One way it was described to us was as if to imagine everything being all in one book and all in one place at the same time, but that you wander through the book on different pages. "Dreamtime" can also be seen as electricity or energy which pulses through everything, especially with regard to certain places on the land and for religious purposes.
From a religious point of view it is important to understand creation beings and stories within the "Dreamtime". The aboriginal view is that the world was once a featureless place. None of the places we know existed until the "creation beings" or "ancestral beings" in the form of people, plants and animals, travelled widely across the land. In a process of living and travelling, they formed the world as we now know it. However, the creation beings are still present, they have not left and they still reside in the land. Therefore the land is seen in a spiritual sense rather than a scientific sense and has great meaning. For example, a westerner will look at Uluru (Ayers Rock) and simply see it as a big rock in the "see it and touch it" sense. An aboriginal person will not see it as just a rock; they actually see their ancestral creation beings residing there at various spots.
These various points in the land are where certain religious ceremonies will be carried out. Often different sites will only be for the use of either women or men, but it would be a mistake to regard this simply as a form of sexism, it would be more accurate to regard it in terms of spiritual safety. The reason is that certain sites ("dreaming sites") are unsafe for men to go to if they are women's sites and vice versa, there are also sites only open to very senior and highly knowledgeable members of the tribe. This can be explained if we again use the "electricity" analogy for the "dreaming". "Dreaming sites" or religious sites can be regarded as power points or plug sockets into the powerful electricity of the dreamtime connection to the ancestral beings. If the wrong person, be it a man or a woman or a person without the necessary knowledge, attempts to mess around with these power points then they will get electrocuted in a spiritual sense. The reason for the separation between men and women is because certain ancestral beings have particular significance for the different sexes. There are also certain parts of knowledge or "business" which are only for women to know and other parts only for men to know, but this doesn’t seem to be unbalanced in favour of either sex.
Aboriginal people actually don't have a code of writing, even though they do rock art, this is mostly for religious significance as part of a ceremony or it will be used to represent an image of a fish or other game as a tool for identification and learning. All the knowledge of the "Dreaming" encompassing all the ways of living off the land, the law, and all the religious significance is passed on through stories, songs, dances and ceremonies and it is all memorised. Some knowledge will only ever be passed on to certain people. Indeed sometimes the land (all of Australia), ancestral beings and dreamtime can also be seen as a huge song, whereby each tribe knows its own certain song line. When you see how much knowledge the aboriginal people have of the land and how to live off it regarding plants and animals, it really is amazing when you understand that it is all memorised!
~
Philosophy and Spirituality
It is important to understand the significance of the land to Aboriginal people; it is not seen in a purely economical sense regarding space to live and food to eat. They believe that their spirit comes from the land; they are deeply connected to it in a spiritual as well as survival sense. They do not see the land as belonging to them in the western sense; they see themselves as belonging to the land. The land is not just earth, plants and water, it is the ancestral beings and the spirits of their recently deceased ancestors, for they are all still there, not gone. When you are born your spirit comes from the land, when you die it returns to the land. This is why they care for the land so much in not over-hunting and not burning too much (they sometimes carefully and strategically burn the land to prevent big wild fires and to promote new growth), for the land is not only their sustenance but also their responsibility. When they care for the land they are at the same time caring for their ancestors and their descendents, this is another illustration of the merging of past, present and future.
One of the reasons it is hard for westerners to fully understand this viewpoint is because of the
way in which we think. For most westerners, we give primary attention and focus to conscious and logical thought which relates to the physical world and all the things we do in our daily life when we are awake. We give distant secondary attention, if any at all, to unconscious thought such as dreams and gut feelings. For aboriginal people this is reversed! They primarily focus and place emphasis on unconscious thought and use it to guide the way they live, therefore a dream may change what they do the next day when they wake up. This is not to say that they forget about conscious thought. In Kakadu a ranger (who spent much time living within a clan of aboriginal people) told us of how powerful this focus can be, whereby she has regularly been around aboriginal people, who as a group have dreamt the same dream at the same time and have also interacted in each other’s dreams. When they wake up they can all individually explain what the others did in the dream, and the others will agree and give the same version of events for all the other individuals. This would seem to mean that their minds are all connected in a way that westerners would almost conceive of as telepathic; in effect they have some kind of collective consciousness within their unconscious thought!
~
Tribal Society and Social Relations
An area of particular significance is how aboriginal society is organised and how everyone is provided for. To start with, there is no acting in one individual’s own “self-interest” within the tribe, this is essential when it comes to survival through the use of water, food, shelter and co-operation, everything simply must be shared or the tribe will not survive in the long term. This is taught as an essential part of growing up for any aboriginal person. In Kakadu we were shown a tree which produces a particularly useful sap used to punish adults who attempt to act in their own self-interest, for example by hording food for themselves. A senior person will place the sap into the eyes of the person whilst they are sleeping, it will then blind them for about a week, after which their sight will go back to normal. During this week they will then learn just how much they need and rely on the other people in the tribe, and will therefore understand how other people rely on them. However, in desert regions where there is far less to live on than in plentiful Kakadu, this punishment becomes far harsher because in the desert it could mean a very quick starvation of the tribe. In the desert regions the person will be blinded by the sap, and then taken to the top of a hill or cliff where they’ll be scared badly so that they run off the edge to their death.
The aboriginal kinship system is another foundation block to the society and apparently consumes a great proportion of conversation between aboriginal individuals. The kinship system is a law which governs social interaction, particularly marriage. In its simplest form clans or tribes which speak the same language are divided into two skin groups (e.g. Dhuwa and Yirritja such as in the Yolnu tribe); however other clans around Australia may have more skin groups such as 4 or 8. Skin groups are not an indicator to actual skin colour, it is more like nature’s identifier (somewhat like Yin and Yang), as everything including plants and animals can also have a skin group. It is always forbidden for someone to marry into their own skin group, as it is a system designed to keep the bloodline free of long term incest and hereditary diseases. The system also serves to make sure there is a complex network of connection between individuals, which results in greater interdependence useful in times of scarcity or drought, where everyone clubs together, possibly across clans, and makes sure everyone is provided for. Also, due to its generation cycle it creates a system where the aged are always completely cared for. The skin group classification can be confusing to non-Aboriginal people because of this cyclical nature whereby it changes for each generation. For instance, you can have a situation where an aboriginal person will refer to their biological great-grandmother as their daughter (who therefore needs to be cared for in the age care system) and where they will also refer to their biological great-granddaughter as their mother. Unsurprisingly this takes a while to master! Within the system there are also avoidance relationships due to respect for certain people or to prevent incest in small bands of people. A good example is that of the mother-in-law/son-in-law relationship, whereby the son-in-law is never allowed to look at, be near, or talk to his mother-in-law, all communication between the two has to be conducted through the daughter/wife. Not a bad system some might say! As this is also based on the skin groups, the boys are taught from a young age to fear their mother-in-law skin group, (which females the boy is allowed to marry is determined by his skin group when he is born) whereby they will be shunned for affection and attention by all the women with a particular skin name.
Another key factor in establishing a communal and non-selfish society comes from the early stages of child-rearing. Whilst an aboriginal child is very young up until about 4 or 5 years, it is spoilt rotten! As long as the tribe can sustain it, the young children get as much as they want, be it food, water, attention, or anything else. Everything revolves around them if the child wishes it so; if they want a cuddle all day, they get it. Apparently the reasoning behind this is so that deep in their psyche is embedded a feeling intrinsically that they do not fear the “lack” of anything, it helps to remove any sense that they “want” or “need” anything extra. They therefore feel satisfied with what they have and do not strive endlessly for excess material “stuff” which is not necessary.
Well, that’s just about it, for all that we know. We think you’ll agree that it’s a truly fascinating culture that views the world in a refreshingly different way to most other people and places. There are many positive things to be learnt from Aboriginal culture, and who’s to say they haven’t got things right? After all it is the oldest surviving indigenous culture in the world, over 50,000 years old.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.17s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 11; qc: 71; dbt: 0.0769s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Philip Panchenko
non-member comment
Interesting stuff
Interesting stuff there guys, although you do actually sound like experts on the subject of Aboriginal culture even though you say your not. You could have fooled me, you should put it on Wikipedia.