The Dreaming
The Dreaming, also referred to as Dreamtime, is a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal beliefs. It was originally used by Francis Gillen, quickly adopted by his colleague Sir Baldwin Spencer and thereafter popularised by A. P. Elkin, who, however, later revised his views.
The Dreaming is used to represent Aboriginal concepts of Everywhen, during which the land was inhabited by ancestral figures, often of heroic proportions or with supernatural abilities. These figures were often distinct from gods, as they did not control the material world and were not worshipped but only revered. The concept of the Dreamtime has subsequently become widely adopted beyond its original Australian context and is now part of global popular culture.
The term is based on a rendition of the
By the 1990s, Dreaming had acquired its own currency in popular culture, based on idealised or fictionalised conceptions of Australian mythology.[citation needed] Since the 1970s, Dreaming has also returned from academic usage via popular culture and tourism and is now ubiquitous in the English vocabulary of Aboriginal Australians in a kind of "self-fulfilling academic prophecy".[2][a]
Etymology
The station-master, magistrate, and amateur ethnographer Francis Gillen first used the terms in an ethnographical report in 1896. With
Altjira
Early doubts about the precision of Spencer and Gillen's English gloss were expressed by the German
Strehlow gives Altjira or Altjira mara (mara meaning 'good') as the Arrente word for the eternal creator of the world and humankind. Strehlow describes him as a tall strong man with red skin, long fair hair, and emu legs, with many red-skinned wives (with dog legs) and children. In Strehlow's account, Altjira lives in the sky (which is a body of land through which runs the Milky Way, a river).[11]
However, by the time Strehlow was writing, his contacts had been converts to Christianity for decades, and critics suggested that Altjira had been used by missionaries as a word for the Christian God.[11]
In 1926, Spencer conducted a field study to challenge Strehlow's conclusion about Altjira and the implied criticism of Gillen and Spencer's original work. Spencer found attestations of altjira from the 1890s that used the word to mean 'associated with past times' or 'eternal', not 'god'.[11]
Academic Sam Gill finds Strehlow's use of Altjira ambiguous, sometimes describing a supreme being, and sometimes describing a totem being but not necessarily a supreme one. He attributes the clash partly to Spencer's cultural evolutionist beliefs that Aboriginal people were at a pre-religion "stage" of development (and thus could not believe in a supreme being), while Strehlow as a Christian missionary found presence of belief in the divine a useful entry point for proselytising.[11]
Linguist David Campbell Moore is critical of Spencer and Gillen's "Dreamtime" translation, concluding:[12]
"Dreamtime" was a mistranslation based on an etymological connection between "a dream" and "Altjira", which held only over a limited geographical domain. There was some semantic relationship between "Altjira" and "a dream", but to imagine that the latter captures the essence of "Altjira" is an illusion.
Other terms
The complex of religious beliefs encapsulated by the Dreamings are also called:
- Ngarrankarni or Ngarrarngkarni by the Gija people[3]
- Jukurrpa or Tjukurpa/Tjukurrpa by the Warlpiri people and in the Pitjantjatjara dialect[3][13][14][4]
- Ungud or Wungud by the Ngarinyin people[3]
- Manguny in the language Martu Wangka[3]
- Wongar in North-East Arnhem Land[3]
- Daramoolen in Ngunnawal language and Ngarigo language[13]
- Nura in the Dharug language[13]
- Nyitting in the Noongar language[15]
Translations and meaning
In English, anthropologists have variously translated words normally understood to mean Dreaming or Dreamtime in a variety of other ways, including "Everywhen", "world-dawn", "ancestral past", "ancestral present", "ancestral now" (satirically), "unfixed in time", "abiding events" or "abiding law".[16]
Most translations of the Dreaming into other languages are based on the translation of the word dream. Examples include Espaces de rêves in French ("dream spaces") and Snivanje in Croatian (a gerund derived from the verb for 'to dream').[17]
The concept of the Dreaming is inadequately explained by English terms, and difficult to explain in terms of non-Aboriginal cultures. It has been described as "an all-embracing concept that provides rules for living, a moral code, as well as rules for interacting with the natural environment ... [it] provides for a total, integrated way of life ... a lived daily reality". It embraces past, present and future.
A dreaming is often associated with a particular place, and may also belong to specific ages, gender or
Aboriginal beliefs and culture
Related entities are known as Mura-mura by the
"Dreaming" is now also used as a term for a system of totemic symbols, so that an Aboriginal person may "own" a specific Dreaming, such as Kangaroo Dreaming, Shark Dreaming, Honey Ant Dreaming, Badger Dreaming, or any combination of Dreamings pertinent to their country. This is because in the Dreaming an individual's entire ancestry exists as one, culminating in the idea that all worldly knowledge is accumulated through one's ancestors. Many Aboriginal Australians also refer to the world-creation time as "Dreamtime". The Dreaming laid down the patterns of life for the Aboriginal people.[20]
Creation is believed to be the work of culture heroes who travelled across a formless land, creating
Some of the ancestor or spirit beings inhabiting the Dreamtime become one with parts of the landscape, such as rocks or trees.
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
In the Wangga genre, the songs and dances express themes related to death and regeneration.[24] They are performed publicly with the singer composing from their daily lives or while Dreaming of a nyuidj (dead spirit).[25]
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
See also
- Dreaming (Australian Aboriginal art)
- Aboriginal mythology
- Apeiron, the concept of the eternal or unlimited in Greek philosophy
- Wuji (philosophy) and Taiji (philosophy), concepts of the eternal or limitless in Chinese philosophy
- The Dreaming (1982 album by Kate Bush)
Notes
- ^ Stanner warned about uncritical use of the term and was aware of its semantic difficulties, while at the same time he continued using it and contributed to its popularisation; according to Swain it is "still used uncritically in contemporary literature".[citation needed]
- ^ "[T]he dim past to which the natives give the name of the 'Alcheringa'." (p.119)
- ^ The Strehlows' informant, Moses (Tjalkabota), was a convert to Christianity, and the adoption of his interpretation suffered from a methodological error, according to Barry Hill, since his conversion made his views on pre-contact beliefs unreliable.
Citations
- ^ Walsh 1979, pp. 33–41.
- ^ a b Swain 1993, p. 21.
- ^ a b c d e f Nicholls 2014a.
- ^ a b c Nicholls, Christine Judith (22 January 2014). "'Dreamtime' and 'The Dreaming' – an introduction". The Conversation. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
- ^ a b "Jukurrpa". Central Art (in Indonesian). Retrieved 18 March 2021.
- ^ a b "Jukurrpa". National Museum of Australia. 7 January 2020. Retrieved 18 March 2021.
- ^ James 2015, p. 36.
- ^ Spencer & Gillen 1899, p. 73 n.1, 645.
- ^ Spencer & Gillen 1904, p. 745.
- ^ Hill 2003, pp. 140–141.
- ^ a b c d Gill 1998, pp. 93–103.
- ^ Moore 2016, pp. 85–108.
- ^ a b c Nicholls 2014b.
- ^ "Jukurrpa". Jukurrpa Designs. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
- ^ "Spirituality". Kaartdijin Noongar. Retrieved 12 March 2023.
- ^ Swain 1993, pp. 21–22.
- ^ Nicholls 2014c.
- ^ "Nelson Jagamara, Michael; Metafisica Australe". QAGOMA Collection Online Beta. Retrieved 18 March 2021.
Simon Wright, Artlines, no.2, 2018, pp.52–3.
- ^ "Catapult Wall Art: Pikilyi Jukurrpa". Catapult Design. Retrieved 18 March 2021.
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica.
- ^ Korff, Jens (8 February 2019). "What is the 'Dreamtime' or the 'Dreaming'?". Creative Spirits. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
- ^ "The Dreaming: Sacred sites". Working with Indigenous Australians. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
- ^ Bates 1996.
- ^ Marett 2005, p. 1.
- ^ Povinelli 2002, p. 200.
Sources
- Bates, Daisy (1996). Aboriginal Perth and Bibbulmun biographies and legends. Hesperion Press.
- ISBN 978-1-483-13786-5.
- Charlesworth, Max; Murphy, Howard; Bell, Diane; Maddock, Kenneth (1984). "Introduction". Religion In Aboriginal Australia: An Anthology. University of Queensland Press.
- "the Dreaming". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
- Gill, Sam D. (1998). Storytracking: Texts, Stories & Histories in Central Australia. Oxford University Press. pp. 93–103. ISBN 978-0195115871.
- ISBN 978-1-742-74940-2.
- Isaacs, Jennifier (1980). Australian Dreaming: 40,000 Years of Aboriginal History. Sydney: Lansdowne Press. ISBN 0-7018-1330-X.
- James, Diana (2015). "Tjukurpa Time". In McGrath, Ann; Jebb, Mary Anne (eds.). Long History, Deep Time: Deepening Histories of Place. ISBN 9781--925-02253-7.
- Lawlor, Robert (1991). Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal dreamtime. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International. ISBN 0-89281-355-5.
- di Leonardo, Micaela (2000). Exotics at Home: Anthropologies, Others, and American Modernity. ISBN 9780226472645.("Into the Crystal Dreamtime", promotional pamphlet, late 1980s; "Crystal Woman: isters of the Dreamtime" 1987; p. 36:"the prescriptive New Age genre, which sells one-hundred-proof ethnological antimodernism without overmuch worry about bothersome ethnographic facts")
- Marett, Allan (2005). Songs, Dreamings, and Ghosts: The Wangga of North Australia. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-8195-6618-8.
- Moore, David (1 January 2016). Altjira, Dream and God. pp. 85–108. ISBN 978-1472443830.
- Nicholls, Christine Judith (22 January 2014a). "'Dreamtime' and 'The Dreaming': An introduction". The Conversation. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
- Nicholls, Christine Judith (28 January 2014c). "'Dreamtime' and 'The Dreaming': Who dreamed up these terms?". The Conversation. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
- Nicholls, Christine Judith (5 February 2014b). "'Dreamings' and dreaming narratives: What's the relationship?". The Conversation. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
- Povinelli, Elizabeth A. (2002). The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism. Durham, North Carolina: ISBN 978-0-8223-2868-1.
- Price-Williams, Douglas (1987). "The waking dream in ethnographic perspective". In Tedlock, Barbara (ed.). Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. ISBN 978-0-521-34004-5.
- Price-Williams, Douglas (2016). "Altjira, Dream and God". In Cox, James L.; Possamai, Adam (eds.). Religion and non-religion among Australian Aboriginal Peoples. ISBN 978-1-317-06795-5.
- Smith, Jeff. Bone #46, Tenth Anniversary. Self-published. Bone-A–Fides section.
- Macmillan & Co.
- Macmillan & Co.
- Spencer, Walter Baldwin; Gillen, Francis James (1968) [First published 1899]. The Native Tribes of Central Australia. New York: Dover.
- Stanner, Bill (1979). White Man Got No Dreaming: Essays 1938–1973. Canberra: Australian National University Press.
- Stanner, W. H. (1968). After The Dreaming. Boyer Lecture Series. ABC.
- Swain, Tony (1993). A Place for Strangers: Towards a History of Australian Aboriginal Being. ISBN 978-0-521-44691-4.
- Vanni, Maurizio; Pedretti, Carlo (2005). Giuliano Ghelli. Le vie del tempo (in Italian, English, and German). Poggibonsi (province of Siena), Italy: Carlo Cambi Editore. pp. 18, 70. ISBN 88-88482-41-5.
Ghelli's work appears as an authentic initiatory experience, with important ordeals to overcome. No Aboriginal boy can be considered a man, nor can an Aboriginal girl marry, until he or she has overcome all the initiatory rituals. One of these, perhaps the most feared, is the interpretation of symbols in paintings associated with Dreamtime.
- Voigt, Anna; Drury, Neville (1997). Wisdom of the Earth: the living legacy of the Aboriginal dreamtime. East Roseville, NSW: Simon & Schuster.
- Walsh, G. L. (1979). "Mutilated hands or signal stencils? A consideration of irregular hand stencils from Central Queensland" (PDF). Australian Archaeology. 9 (9): 33–41. hdl:2328/708.
- Wolf, Fred Alan (1994). The Dreaming Universe: a mind-expanding journey into the realm where psyche and physics meet. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-74946-3.
- Wolfe, Patrick (1997). "Should the Subaltern Dream? "Australian Aborigines" and the Problem of Ethnographic Ventriloquism". In Humphreys, Sarah C. (ed.). Cultures of Scholarship. ISBN 978-0-472-06654-4.
Further reading
Library resources about Dreamtime |
- Goddard, Cliff; Wierzbicka, Anna (2015). "What does Jukurrpa ('Dreamtime', 'the Dreaming') mean? A semantic and conceptual journey of discovery" (PDF). Australian Aboriginal Studies (1): 34–65.