Aboriginal spirituality determined by the dreaming Flashcards
What is the dreaming?
- Foundation of Aboriginal life, spirituality and culture
- central concept that underpins all Aboriginal spirituality
- Metatemporal (connects past, present and future)
- Inextricably connected with the land and Aboriginal life
What is Kinship?
- System of relationships traditionally accepted by a particular culture and the rights and obligations they involve
- complex relationships of blood and spirit that exists between Aboriginal Peoples.
- Each person has a different role and responsibility that lead to a rich personal and social life
- Kinship groups are established by family and totem relationships
What are skin names?
- Baby given a skin name by the elders who know the baby’s family tree
- show who people can marry
what are totems?
- Natural object, plant or animal that is inherited by members of a clan or family as their spiritual emblem
- Represents ongoing life-force of the dreaming
- Spirits require kinship groups to be designated territory and totems
What is ceremonial life?
- Is the ritual and artistic expression of the dreaming obligations to the land and people
What are the aspects of ceremonial life?
Art:
- illustrates the actions of the ancestral beings in the land
Stories:
- foundation and explanation of various aspects of tradition and law
- teaches aboriginal children about right and wrong behaviour in society
- explains creation of the natural world
What are overall rituals
- understood as a moment of reliving the past in the present moment the creative activities of the ancestor spirits
- ancestral beings are made present through the people, objects, words and movements of the ritual
- rites of passage: initiation, death and burial
- periodic ceremonies
- public corroboree
what are death and burial rites
- death is not the end of life but the last ceremony in the present life
- Belief that spirits of the dead return to the dreaming places they have come from
- burial grounds and spirits of the dead are feared
- names of the dead must not be spoken
What are the obligations to land and people
- responsibility to care for and nurture the land
- the land is sacred
- dreaming is inextricably connected to the land as it provides a medium in which the dreaming is lived and communicated
- sacred sites extremely important
- land symbolises the ‘mother’
- land not only provides food and water but is also the repository of the secret/sacred - the activities of dreaming ancestor beings
How were Aboriginal people separated from the land?
- “Terra Nullius” empty land which is a concept of British Law
- denied Aboriginal people access to waterholes, hunting grounds and sacred sites
- concept of private property meant Aboriginal people were deprived access to their traditional land
- new introduced species destroyed the land
- seperation from land = no sense of belonging to life, loss of purpose in life, denies the individual ability to return to spiritual world after death
How were Aboriginal people separated from family
The stolen generation
- seperated from families
- seperated from aboriginal life
- seperated from land
- seperated from native language
Seperation from Kinship groups
- dispossession of Aboriginal people from their land, meant the destruction of their complex kinship structure
What was the Mabo case 1992?
- 1992 the high court of Australia ruled in favour of an action brought by Eddie Mabo on behalf of the Murray Island people
- overturned “Terra Nullius”
- recognised and gave native title to the certain groups of the Murray Islands people
- in order to claim native title it has to be proved that continuous links with the land had been maintained since before 1788
What was the native title act 1993/4
- legislation allowing for indigenous people to legally appeal for native title and be recognised with such
- didn’t always guarantee access to sacred sites due to pre-established freehold leased + proof of connection was difficult
What was the Wik case 1996?
- native title could co-exist with pastoral leases
- government owned land but leased it out to private owners
- was not beneficial
What was the native title amendment act 1998?
- abolished the right of native title claims and the right to negotiate for government owned land
- a step back
