Aboriginal Spirituality Flashcards
What is the dreaming?
The Dreaming is the worldview that structures many Indigenous cultures. Dreaming stories to pass on imperative knowledge, cultural values, traditions and law to future generations.
Done so through songs, dances, rituals, ceremonies and symbols. Its the interplay between past, present and future.
What is the significance of mythic beings?
Many of these beings took the form of human beings or of animals(“totemic”) some of which changed their forms. They were credited with having established the local social order and its “laws.”
The places where the mythic beings performed some action or were “turned into” something else becamesacred, and it was around these that ritual was focussed. Mythic beings of the Dreaming are eternal. Their essential quality never diminished despite being killed or turned.
What is the role of the elder?
To pass on knowledge to the younger generation and provide guidance to ones lost and/or teach the young and growing.
What is the physical world?
Connection with lands, trees, site, waterholes, rocks. Tracks - cross with each and events. Dances and rituals performed. The land.
What is the human world?
Rules of behaviour, secrecy, people, family relationships, responsible for owning and caring for different places, capacity to adapt and change, Nguraritja and Tjukurpa.
What is the sacred world?
Exists outside of time. The law cannot change and differs slightly from other tribes. Punishment. Increase care for the country. Stories explaining the world, creation destruction, and change, for instance, the seven sisters, healing aka seeing the future.
What does the dreaming guide people in?
Animals, plants, art, social control, languages, technology and totemic sites.
What is the Tjukurpa?
Stories talking about the beginning of time when ancestral beings 1st created the world, moral compasses, how to survive, serves as a map, not written down but is memorised, gifted to the right people at the right time, their justice system, tells of the relationships between land, people, animals and spirits, passed on through dances, arts, stories, songs and ceremonies.
Religious philosophy links Anangu (upholding Tjukurpa) to the environment and ancestors.
What is kinship?
The fabric of traditional first nations societies’ relationships. Wanting to belong, and have responsibilities and relationships. “The completeness of the oneness”. Kanyini set of laws.
What is ceremonial life?
Rites of passage, passing on social information, past connections, spiritual connections, links between land, people and identity. Interconnectedness with kinship due to rituals passing on knowledge. Acknowledge a creation event and show the metaphysical presence of the dreaming world in the real world.
What is an obligation to land and people?
The land is the physical medium (resting place), rituals are connected to sacred sites (balance rites), and land is the meeting point (tribes show identity and their relationships.)
