UNIT ONE: AUSTRALIA POST 1945
CONTEMPORARY ABORIGINAL SPIRITUALITIES
• Aboriginal spiritualty as determined by the Dreaming
The Dreaming:
- The Dreaming is the root of Aboriginal spirituality and is important to every Aboriginal culture and societies.
- The Dreaming is term used to label all knowledge and understanding in Aboriginal societies.
- The Dreaming gives the Aboriginal people a way to explain on how the world came to be.
- The Dreaming is communicated through art, song, dance, story, ritual and kinship systems. Kinship:
- Kinship ties is a complex system of belonging, relationships and responsibilities within a clan that are based on the Dreaming.
- Kinship is determined by both family relationships
- It is also determined by a
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- The land is the physical aspect, where the Dreaming is lived and communicated.
- The land is a resting place for ancestral spirit beings.
- There are ritual responsibilities connected with sacred sites, known as balance rites.
- A sacred site is the land upon which particular event in the Dreaming took place.
- Aboriginal people’s sense of identity is linked with the land.
• Continuing effect of dispossession on Aboriginal spiritualties in relation to:
Separation from land:
- The English settlers took away Aboriginal peoples sacred land, which caused them to lose meaning to their life and the connection they had with it.
- The policy of protection meant that Aboriginals must live where the white settlers tell them to which took the freedom of movement away.
- Their relationship and empathy with the land had been damaged. Everything in the Aboriginal life became meaningless.
- The aim to take the Aborignal’s land away was to destroy their religion and spiritual links.
Separation from kinship groups:
- Kinship groups are important in the Aboriginal culture due to the fact that kinship connects the family and clan together that give rights, roles and responsibilities within a