Understanding the Dreaming

To know the country is to know the story of how it came into being.

That story also carries the knowledge of how the human custodians of that country came into being. The relationship between other species and country is that they too belong there because they have their origins in Dreaming. Other species act as they do, communicate as they do, live where they do, and interact as they do because Dreaming made them that way.

The Australian continent is criss-crossed with the tracks of the Dreamings: walking, slithering, crawling, flying, chasing, hunting, weeping, dying, giving birth. Performing rituals, distributing the plants, making the landforms and water, establishing things in their own places, making the relationships between one place and another. Where they travelled, where they stopped, where they lived the events of their lives, all these places are sources and sites of Law. These tracks and sites, and the Dreamings associated with them, make up the sacred geography of Australia; they are visible in paintings and engravings; they are sung in the songs, depicted in body painting and sacred objects; they form the basis of a major dimension of the land tenure system for most Aboriginal people.

The purpose and meaning of life are located in the relationships between people , their home countries, their Dreamings, the plants and animals, geological formations and waters, and each other.

Dreaming places are sites where life and Law continue to be brought into being. Where Dreamings performed actions, or where they came to rest, these places are known as sacred sites in contemporary terminology. The people who belong to the site, and who are its owners and custodians in Aboriginal Law, know how the site should be managed, and they assert their right to be consulted. In many areas the sacred site is protected. No hunting, fishing, gathering or burning can take place within prescribed boundaries.

Rituals of well-being involve a variety of procedures, the most complex of which are ritual performances including song, dance, and body paint, which are carried out over long periods of time. There are also modest ritual actions in which people use green branches to strike the tree, the stone, the antbed, or whatever it is that is associated with the plant or animal species. The action of striking is intended to stimulate the consciousness and activity of the Dreaming, with the effect that that species will be stimulated to more growth.