Aboriginal spirituality as determined by the Dreaming: Kinship, Ceremonial Life, Obligations to the land and people Flashcards
What is kinship?
- It has several levels
- It is vital to Aboriginal spiritualities
- The kinship system provides a framework with clans and families on a multitude of topics - how to care for the environment
- It is a framework to share knowledge with clans and families
- Kinship covers responsibilities, roles, and reciprocal bonds - e.g how people relate, marry, and support
What are Nations, Clans, and Family Groups?
Nations:
- 500 Nations exist in Australia
- They are connected through their kinship systems
- They have distinct boarders of rivers, mountains, rocks and hills.
- They are either patrilineal or matrilineal
Clans:
- They are within nations
- they share common kinship and language
Family Groups:
- Are within clans
- include important relationships, such as being of patrilineal or matrilineal descent
- Patrilineal: children obtain moiety, skin names, and totem from father
- Matrilineal: children obtain moiety, skin names, and totem from mother
What is Moiety?
- Two halves
- Example: a nation with have two parts, with people from patrilineal or matrilineal descent
What are Totems?
- Linked to the dreaming through its connection to nature
- Everyone has responsibility to their totem, seen to expend throughout their lifetime.
- Links individuals to land, air, water, and geographical features
- Four totems per person: nation, clan, family group, and personal
- Creates balance as people conserve the totem, while others may hunt or kill it
What are skin names?
- Are a specific order of a group of names, given through families
- they are used to identify bloodlines, and how individuals are linked and should interact
- Example:
skin name order = a, b, c, d
–> If b had a child, their name would be c. If c had a child, their name would be d; and so on.
Describe language and tradition affiliations.
- there are 500 nations with their own language
- Aboriginal nations have language, trade, marriage, cultural, environmental, religious, and resource sharing connections with each other
- Australians must recognise the variety and diversity of Aboriginal culture
- Knowledge on Aboriginal protocols for communication and travel means paying respect to Aboriginal people by knowing what is acceptable and what isn’t
- Avoids wrong things
Lines of Communication refers to ?
- The knowledge that is passed down from generation to generation
- Travelled through generations by elders
- Due to factors like skin names, and moiety, this descent of knowledge is dependent on matrilineal and patrilineal.
Disconnected lines refers to?
- The Stolen Generations: How First Nations children were separated from their families and its impact on Indigenous culture and family.
- Includes missionaries and the effects of forced relationships against kinships.
Missionaries:
- Not allowed to transmit their culture
- Children were governed and had no freedom
- It affected their cultural and familial connections
Forced relationships against Kinship structures:
- They are pushed from their culture
- Being forced to go against their cultural stripped them from their identity and belonging with their Indigenous identity
- Led to the lose of knowledge as it cannot be passed down to the younger generations
What is the significance of art for Dreaming?
- It communicates the Dreaming
- Illustrates the actions of the ancestral spirits
- Has multiple meanings
What is the importance of Stories from the Dreaming?
- Stories from the Dreaming describe Aboriginal law and lifestyle
- They describe how ancestral spirits, moved through the land to create, natural phenomena
- It is the foundation and explanation for aspects of Aboriginal tradition and law
- Explains the creation of the natural world
The importance of rituals from the Dreaming.
- They relive activities of ancestral spirits
- They are understood as a moment of reliving in the present moment
- Reliving is in a sacred way
- Involves sacred sites and totems
Why are totems significant to Dreaming?
- they are the embodiment of each individual in their primordial state
- Is a person as they existed in the Dreaming
- Carry ceremonial responsibilities
What are the Aboriginal obligations to the Land and People through Dreaming
- Aboriginal peoples regard the land as their mother
- the land is seen as a physical medium through which the Dreaming is lived and communicated
- The land is a dwelling place for ancestral spirit beings
- Acknowldgements of the traditional owners of the land indicate the significant link between the indigenous peoples and the land they live on.
