Dreaming (Australian Aboriginal art)
In
Australian Aboriginal art
, a Dreaming is a totemistic design or artwork, which can be owned by a tribal group or individual.
This usage of anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner's term was popularised by Geoffrey Bardon in the context of the Papunya Tula
artist collective he established in the 1970s.
Terminology
"
animist creation narrative of Aboriginal Australians for a personal, or group, creation and for what may be understood as the "timeless time" of formative creation and perpetual creating. In addition, the term applies to places and localities on indigenous Australian traditional land (and throughout non-traditional Australia) where the uncreated creation spirits and totemic ancestors, or genii loci, reside.[1]
The term was coined by W. E. H. Stanner in 1956, and popularized from the 1960s.[2] based on the description of indigenous Australian mythology by Lucien Levy-Bruhl (La Mythologie Primitive, 1935).[3]
The term "Dreaming" is based on the root of the term altjira (alcheringa) used by the
Aranda people, although it has since been pointed out that the rendition is based on a mistranslation.[4]
Stanner introduced the derived term of "dreamtime
" in the 1970s.
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art
"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 "
Anmatyerre, had to agree 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, reminded Bardon that he, the elder, had suggested the mural be painted. Later, Bardon realised Long Tom Onion owned that Dreaming. He comprehended the importance of Dreaming ownership among indigenous Australians, especially those who retain tribal and traditional connections.
Among the
Central Desert tribes of Australia, the passing on 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". By 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
title deed after terra nullius was struck down during the tenure of Chief Justice Gerard Brennan
.
See also
- Anangu
- Embodied imagination
References
- ^ Kimber, R. G., Man from Arltunga, Hesperian Press, Carlisle, Western Australia, 1986, chapter 12
- ^ W.E.H Stanner, "The dreaming" in T.A.G. Hungerford (ed.), Australian Signpost, (1956); W.E.H Stanner, The Australian Aboriginal Dreaming as an Ideological System (1963)
- ^ "the religious symbol system at the primitive level is characterized by Lévy-Bruhl as "le monde mythique", and Stanner directly translates the Australians' own word for it as 'the Dreaming'." R. N. Bellah, "Religious Evolution" in: S. N. Eisenstadt (ed.), Readings in Social Evolution and Development, Elsevier, 2013 p. 220.
- ^ B. Kilborne, "On classifying dreams", in: Barbara Tedlock (ed.) Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations, 1987, p. 249. Tony Swain, Place for Strangers: Towards a History of Australian Aboriginal Being, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 21.
- Bardon, G. and Bardon, J. (2005), Papunya: The Story After the Place, Melbourne: University of Melbourne, Miegunyah Press