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Essay on aborigines
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The dreaming permeate all facets of aboriginal life
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Despite the vast number of different religions in the world today, a single one stands out. This religion is the cumulative beliefs of the Australian Aborigine people, often referred to as Dreamtime. Dreamtime was a fascinating subject for the first European settlers of Australia, and for many generations after them. Children’s story books are still written about the topic. These tales portray the Dreamtime beliefs in a relatively accurate, yet extremely simplified, way. The truth is that Dreamtime is a very unique religion that is set aside from almost every other religion on the Earth. The religious traditions of the Australian Aborigines vary significantly from those of other religions in a few key ways: everything is somehow related to a deity, there is no distinction between things sacred and profane or real and imaginary, and there is a universal oneness in thought and in body; these differences show up everywhere in day-to-day life and heavily influence everything related to the Aborigines.
Although there are more facets to the religious aspects of the Australian Aborigines, the center of the beliefs is Dreamtime, which is a creation myth, a daily event, and a life-guide. The Aborigine religion mostly an animist framework, in that there is no set number of deities (Koepping 368). There are a few specific deities that are held higher than others, such as deities that created large land masses (Koepping 368). These deities created the universe in a period known as the Dreamtime, or also the Dreaming. These deities are ancestral totemic spirit being, who came to earth and made everything the way it is now (Australian Aboriginal Religion). Unlike some other beliefs, the Aborigines believe that these archetypal beings had and ...
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Smith, Ramsay W. Myths and Legends of the Australian Aborigines. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003. Print.
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Yengoyan, Aram A. "Economy, Society, and Myth in Aboriginal Australia." Annual Review of Anthropology 8.1 (1979): 393-415. Print.
'The Australian Legend', in itself is an acurate portrayal and recount of one part of society, from a specific era, ie. the Australian bushman of the 1890s. Its exaggerations, however, such as the romanticism of the bush ethos by Australian writers, the unbalanced use of evidence, and the neglect to acknowledge the contribution to our national identity from certain sections of society, ie. aboriginal people, city-dwellers, women, and non-British immigrants, render this book to be flawed. For these reasons, it cannot be regarded as a complete and balanced account of Australian history.
Dreaming is an extremely important part of life for Aboriginal people. The Dreaming or Dreamtime is the Aboriginal understanding of the world of its creations and its great stories. The Dreaming world was the old time of the Ancestor Beings. They emerged from the earth at the time of the creation. Time began in the world the moment these supernatural beings were "born out of their own Eternity" (Aboriginalart.com.au, 2018).
Bourke, E and Edwards, B. 1994. Aboriginal Australia. St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press.
The Dreaming in Aboriginal Spirituality Dreaming is at the core of traditional Aboriginal religious beliefs. The term itself translates as various words in different languages of the Aboriginal people of the country. Groups each have their own words for this. concept: for example the Ngarinyin people of north-Western Australia. use the word Ungud, the Arrernte people of central Australia refer to as Aldjerinya and the Adnyamathanha use the word Nguthuna.
Reynolds, H. (1990). With The White People: The crucial role of Aborigines in the exploration and development of Australia. Australia: Penguin Books
The religion of the Ojibwe is centered on a belief of a single creating force but according the Minnesota Historical Society the religion also, “Incorporated a wide pantheon of spirits that played specific roles in the universe.” These different spirits took on different roles, some to protect the Ojibwe hunters, protection from illness and while in battle. Each person had a personal guardian spirit which was one of their most important. Their guardian spirit would come to them in a dream or vision and could be called on for protection and guidance. The tribe also had spiritual leaders, which were feared and respected because of their supernatural powers that could be used for good, or evil. Dreams were related to religion and spirit guides. Natives believed dreams carried great significance and that they would provide visions of their future and how to live their lives. The Ojibwe would go on annual fasts to renew the vision of their lives and reflect.
Aboriginal spirituality originally derives from the stories of the dreaming. The dreaming is the knowledge and a sense of belonging that the Aboriginals had of the beginning of life and the relationship to the land and sea (Australian Museum, 2011). The dreaming stories are passed on from one generation to the next orally. These stories teach the following generations how to behave towards the land and other people. The dreaming stories give them a sense of duty to protect the land and appreciate it because the dreamtime stories indicate that the spirits have not died but are still alive in different forms as animals or humans, therefore the ancestor’s power is still felt through the landforms (Clark, 1963), (Australian Governement, 2008)
Australian indigenous culture is the world’s oldest surviving culture, dating back sixty-thousand years. Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders have been represented in a myriad of ways through various channels such as poetry, articles, and images, in both fiction and non-fiction. Over the years, they have been portrayed as inferior, oppressed, isolated, principled and admirable. Three such texts that portray them in these ways are poems Circles and Squares and Grade One Primary by Ali Cobby Eckermann, James Packer slams booing; joins three cheers for footballer and the accompanying visual text and Heywire article Family is the most important thing to an islander by Richard Barba. Even though the texts are different as ….. is/are …., while
Jenkins, Phillips. The Lost History of Christianity. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008. Print. Phillips, Jonathan.
Australia’s Indigenous people are thought to have reached the continent between 60 000 and 80 000 years ago. Over the thousands of years since then, a complex customary legal system have developed, strongly linked to the notion of kinship and based on oral tradition. The indigenous people were not seen as have a political culture or system for law. They were denied the access to basic human right e.g., the right to land ownership. Their cultural values of indigenous people became lost. They lost their traditional lifestyle and became disconnected socially. This means that they were unable to pass down their heritage and also were disconnected from the new occupants of the land.
McManners, John. "The Oxford History of Christianity." The Oxford History of Christianity. New York: New York Oxford Press, 2002. 28.
Lawlor, Robert. Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Trad. Ltd., 1991.
Lane, T. (2006). A concise history of christian thought (Completely ed.). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
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.
Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity. 2nd ed. New York City, NY: HarperOne, 2010.