The Role Of The Dreaming In Australian Culture

The Dreaming and ‘Dreamtime’

Storytelling is an integral part of life for Indigenous Australians. From an early age, storytelling plays a vital role in educating children. The stories help to explain how the land came to be shaped and inhabited; how to behave and why; where to find certain foods, etc.

Once the ancestor spirits had created the world, they changed into trees, the stars, rocks, watering holes or other objects. These are the sacred places of Aboriginal culture and have special properties. Because the ancestors did not disappear at the end of the Dreaming, but remained in these sacred sites, the Dreaming is never-ending, linking the past and the present, the people and the land.

As children grow into adults, more of the history

Music, song and dance was and is still today a very important part of Aboriginal life and customs. Songs and dances were exchanged often at large ceremonial gatherings when many people gathered together , often occurred at a time and place when there was plenty of food.

Dance is a unique aspect of ceremonies which is learnt and passed down from one generation to another. To dance is to be knowledgeable about the stories of the ancestral heroes although dancing, unlike painting and singing, is learnt at an early age.

Art

Australian Indigenous art is the oldest ongoing tradition of art in the world. Initial forms of artistic Aboriginal expression were rock carvings, body painting and ground designs, which date back more than 30,000 years. Art has always been an important part of Aboriginal life, connecting past and present, the people and the land, and the supernatural and reality.

The earliest Indigenous art was paintings or engravings on boulders or on the walls of rock shelters and caves. Red ochre was being used for painting at least 30,000 years ago in central Australia. Indigenous people relate these very old images to the actions of Dreaming beings. The images are sacred because they show a continuing ancestral

Intended to plant traditionally Epic political thoughts and social messages into spectator’s heads, the play explores several overarching themes prominent in those who fell to the Stolen Generation.

Themes:

Loss

Harrison goes into great depth in the multiple areas victims of the Stolen Generation have lost something that they have a right to, making this theme able to be categorised into smaller themes of their own: a loss of identity, loss of hope, loss of family and place, loss of sanity, and loss of innocence. These themes affect particular characters from Stolen more than other but give a good representation of the experiences those impacted by the event dealt with.

Social Injustice

Social Injustice is evidently a thoroughly explored theme in Stolen and constantly bought to the spectator’s thoughts by Harrison. This ties in with the theme of loss as it is unjust to separate children from their families, to deny people of their heritage and culture, and to take someone’s sanity; their ability to live essentially.