Dreamtime

This article is about Australian Aboriginal Mythology. For other uses, see Dreamtime (disambiguation).

Stencil art at Carnarvon Gorge, supposedly showing "unique clan markers and dreamtime stories symbolizing attempts to catch the deceased's spirit".

Dream time (also dreamtime, dream-time; "world-dawn") is a term for the animist framework and symbol system of Australian Aboriginal mythology, introduced by A. P. Elkin in 1938 and popularized by William Edward Hanley Stanner and others from the 1970s for a concept of "time out of time", or "everywhen", inhabited by ancestral figures, often of heroic proportions or with supernatural abilities, but not considered "gods" as they do not control the material world and are not worshipped.

The term is based on a rendition of the indigenous (Arandic) word alcheringa, used by the Aranda (Arunta, Arrernte) people of Central Australia, although it appears that it is based on a misunderstanding or mistranslation, and the word has a meaning closer to "eternal, uncreated". However, "Dreamtime" and "the Dreaming" has acquired its own currency in 1980s popular culture based on idealized or fictionalized conceptions of Australian mythology. Since the 1970s, "Dreaming" and "Dream time" has also returned from academic usage via popular culture and tourism, and is now ubiquitous in the English vocabulary of indigenous Australians in a kind of "self-fulfilling academic prophecy".

Aboriginal mythology and culture

Ku-ring-gai Chase-petroglyph, via Waratah Track, depicting Baiame, the Creator God and Sky Father in the dreaming of several Aboriginal language groups.

Waugals (yellow triangles with a black snake in the centre) are the official Bibbulmun Track trailmarkers between Kalamunda and Albany in Western Australia. The Noongar believe that the Waugal, or Wagyl, created the Swan River and is represented by the Darling scarp.

Main article: Australian Aboriginal mythology

The term "Dreaming" is directly based on the term Altjira (Alchera), the name of a spirit or entity in the mythology of the Aranda. Related entities are known as Mura-mura by the Dieri, and as Tjukurpa in Pitjantjatjara.

"Dreaming" is now also used as a term for a system of totemistic symbols, so that an indigenous Australian may "own" a specific "Dreaming", such as Kangaroo Dreaming, or Shark Dreaming, or Honey Ant Dreaming, or any combination of Dreamings pertinent to their country. This is because in "Dreamtime" an individual's entire ancestry exists as one, culminating in the idea that all worldly knowledge is accumulated through one's ancestors. Many Indigenous Australians also refer to the Creation time as "The Dreaming". The Dreamtime laid down the patterns of life for the Aboriginal people.

Creation is believed to be the work of culture heroes who traveled across a formless land, creating sacred sites and significant places of interest in their travels. In this way, "songlines" (or Yiri in the Warlpiri language) were established, some of which could travel right across Australia, through as many as six to ten different language groupings. The dreaming and travelling trails of the Spirit Beings are the songlines. The signs of the Spirit Beings may be of spiritual essence, physical remains such as petrosomatoglyphs of body impressions or footprints, among natural and elemental simulacra.

"Dreaming" existed before the life of the individual begins, and continues to exist when the life of the individual ends. Both before and after life, it is believed that this spirit-child exists in the Dreaming and is only initiated into life by being born through a mother. The spirit of the child is culturally understood to enter the developing fetus during the fifth month of pregnancy. When the mother felt the child move in the womb for the first time, it was thought that this was the work of the spirit of the land in which the mother then stood. Upon birth, the child is considered to be a special custodian of that part of his country and is taught the stories and songlines of that place. As Wolf (1994: p. 14) states: "A black 'fella' may regard his totem or the place from which his spirit came as his Dreaming. He may also regard tribal law as his Dreaming."

In the Wangga genre, the songs and dances express themes related to death and regeneration. They are performed publicly with the singer composing from their daily lives or while Dreaming of a nyuidj (dead spirit).

Examples

Dreaming stories vary throughout Australia, with variations on the same theme. The meaning and significance of particular places and creatures is wedded to their origin in the Dreaming, and certain places have a particular potency or "dreaming".

For example, the story of how the sun was made is different in New South Wales and in Western Australia. Stories cover many themes and topics, as there are stories about creation of sacred places, land, people, animals and plants, law and custom.

In Perth, the Noongar believe that the Darling Scarp is the body of the Wagyl – a serpent being that meandered over the land creating rivers, waterways and lakes and who created the Swan River.

In another example, the Gagudju people of Arnhemland, for which Kakadu National Park is named, believe that the sandstone escarpment that dominates the park's landscape was created in the Dreamtime when Ginga (the crocodile-man) was badly burned during a ceremony and jumped into the water to save himself. He turned to stone and became the escarpment. The common theme in these examples and similar ones is that topographical features are either the physical embodiments of creator beings or are the results of their activity.

People from a remote outstation called Yarralin, which is part of the Victoria River region, venerate the spirit Walujapi as the Dreaming Spirit of the black-headed python. Walujapi carved a snakelike track along a cliff-face and left an impression of her buttocks when she sat establishing camp. Both these dreaming signs are still discernible.

In popular culture

An early reference is found is Richard McKenna's 1960 speculative fiction novelette, "Fiddler's Green", which mentions "Alcheringa...the Binghi spirit land", i.e. the Aranda concept translated as "Dream time". Early (1970s) references to the concept include Peter Weir's films The Last Wave (1977) and Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975).

"Dreamtime" became a widely cited concept in popular culture in the 1980s, and by the late 1980s was adopted as a cliché in New Age and feminist spirituality alongside related appeals to other "Rouseauian natural people", such as the Native Americans idealized in 1960s hippie counterculture.

1980s

• Philip K. Dick uses Dreamtime, among a plethora of other concepts, to describe his breakdown in his novel VALIS (1981).
• A 1982 album by Kate Bush is entitled The Dreaming, the title track of which deals with the upheaval of the Aboriginal people.
• During the 1980s, the UK band The Stranglers recorded an album called Dreamtime, with a title track inspired by the Aboriginal concept.
• The Cult's 1984 album is entitled Dreamtime. The album deals with Aboriginal themes, owing to singer Ian Astbury's interest in the book Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.
• Werner Herzog's Where the Green Ants Dream (Wo die grünen Ameisen träumen) (1984) posited an Aboriginal protest against uranium mining based on the taboo against disturbing the dream of green ants and thus causing the destruction of the world.
• Frog Dreaming (1986) (renamed The Quest when released in the USA) included certain aspects of Aboriginal Dreaming.
• Bruce Chatwin wrote the blended fiction/non-fiction novel, The Songlines (1987), in exploration of some important aboriginal concepts.
• The Star Trek novel Strangers from the Sky (1987) by Margaret Wander Bonanno has Captain Kirk using Dreamtime to investigate an altered reality.
• Steve Roach's 1988 album is entitled Dreamtime Return. The album deals with the concept of the Dreamtime.

1990s

• Neil Gaiman's graphic novels The Sandman (1989–March 1996) are partially set in "The Dreaming", referred to in early volumes as "Dreamtime", and also reference "Fiddler's Green"
• Dreamtime Village, an intentional community in Wisconsin founded in 1990, dedicated to "various permaculture, hypermedia, and sustainability projects".
• British Folk Metal band Skyclad have a polemical song on their debut album The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth (1991) called Trance Dance (A Dreamtime Walkabout) whose narrator is an Aborigine.
• Spider Robinson's trilogy Stardance touches upon this in the second volume (1991).
• Grant Morrison's character King Mob in his comic The Invisibles (1994–2000) visits Uluru and speaks telepathically with an aboriginal elder, he remarks that this is possible because he is a 'Scorpion dreaming'.
• Tad Williams four-volume science fiction epic Otherland (1996) touches upon Dreamtime and other aboriginal myths.
• "In the Dreamtime", a song written by Ralph McTell, was used in Billy Connoly's 'World Tour of Australia' (1996)
• Terry Pratchett's novel "The Last Continent" (1998) uses several dreamtime concepts

2000 to present

• In Big Finish Productions Doctor Who audio drama, Dreamtime (2005), the Seventh Doctor and his companions deal with Aborigine mysticism and Uluru.
• Alexis Wright's novel Carpentaria (2006) alludes to Dreaming narrative from the Gulf of Carpentaria through her stories of contemporary Aboriginal characters, a form of Australian magical realism.
• Sandra McDonald's novels, The Outback Stars, The Stars Down Under and The Stars Blue Yonder (2007–2009), use Aboriginal myth extensively.
• The film Australia (2008) included aspects of aboriginal Dreaming (songlines).

See also

• Dreaming (Australian Aboriginal art)
• Aboriginal mythology
  • Minka Bird
  • Rainbow Serpent
  • Tjilbruke
• Bruce Chatwin
• Charles P. Mountford
• Ainslie Roberts
• Ted Strehlow
• Indigenous All Stars, a rugby league team also known as Indigenous Dreamtime.

References

Other sources

• Wolf, Fred Alan (1994). The Dreaming Universe: a mind-expanding journey into the realm where psyche and physics meet. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-74946-3
• Australian Dreaming: 40,000 Years of Aboriginal History. Compiled and edited by Jennifer Isaacs. (1980) Lansdowne Press. Sydney. ISBN 0-7018-1330-X
• C. Elbadawi, I. Douglas, The Dreamtime: A link to the past
• Max Charlesworth, Howard Murphy, Diane Bell and Kenneth Maddock, 'Introduction' in Religion In Aboriginal Australia: An Anthology, University of Queensland Press, Queensland, Australia, 1984.
• Anna Voigt and Neville Drury (1997). Wisdom Of The Earth: the living legacy of the Aboriginal dreamtime. Simon & Schuster, East Roseville, NSW, Australia.
• W.H. Stanner, After The Dreaming, Boyer Lecture Series, ABC 1968.
• Spencer, Walter Baldwin and Francis James Gillen (1899; 1968). The Native Tribes of Central Australia. New York, Dover.
• Stanner, Bill (1979). White Man Got No Dreaming: Essays 1938–1973. Canberra, Australia: Australian National University Press.
• Lawlor, Robert (1991). Voices Of The First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal dreamtime. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International, Ltd. ISBN 0-89281-355-5

External links

Library resources about Dreamtime

Resources in your library

• Australian Aborigine Dream Beliefs
• Northern Territory Official Tourism Site
• Aboriginal Tourism The Dreamtime