Dreamtime and the Totem

“They say we have been here for 40,000 years, but it is much longer. We have been here since time began. We have come directly out of the Dreamtime of our creative ancestors, those forces and powers that created the world. We have kept the earth as it was on the first day, recording the origins of life, in accordance with the power, wisdom and intentions of our ancestral beings.”

Paul Ah Chee-Ngala,
Arrernte Bandsman

To enter Dreamtime, the Aboriginal shamans meditate to achieve extraordinary states of consciousness, believing it is only in these states that one can be fully attuned “to the inner dreaming of the Earth” (Lawlor, 1991). Upon returning from a Dreamtime journey, the shamans will relate their observations to the tribe. Often, a physical representation of the shaman's totem will be created to mark the Dreaming.

The totem plays an exceedingly important role in many aspects of Aboriginal life. Used in storytelling, totemism describes the links between humanity, nature, and the ancestral spirits. Believing themselves wrought from the Earth through the Dreaming, the Aboriginal people pay homage to their roots. “Nature gives life to humanity, and through culture humanity gives meaning to nature- together, they give body to the invisible life of their Dreamtime creators (p. 279)” (Lawlor, 1991). This triangular reciprocity is the foundation of totemism.

To find one’s individual totem, a journey is often involved. The young Aborigine will leave his band in search of a communal site described by a shaman, trusted family member, or dream. Upon leaving, the adolescent is given sacred gifts by his family, not for guidance, but protection (Flannery, 2004). The journey itself will often take the young Aborigine to the lands of other clans or tribes, where he will learn to respect the traditions and knowledge of all people, not just those previously known to him. Corroborees are often held for these youth, to share stories and Dreamings they can repeat to their own clans upon returning home.

Through totemic relations, the Aborigines classify themselves into three distinct social groupings: the band, the clan, and the tribe. The band is the smallest of the three, and is formed by members who hunt and camp together. Most bands consist of individuals from different clans within the same larger tribe, as people marry across clan lines. A band might boast between four and 10 families, depending on the fertility of the land they cover.

Second is the clan. The population of a clan is usually in the hundreds, and is formed by those people “tied” to a particular region. Land ties can exist for several reasons, including sacred Dreamtime sites and abundance of one’s totemic animal or plant. Each clan is responsible to the tribe for preserving the rituals and history associated with their chief totemic species. They are also obligated to the Earth through their totem. For example, if the population of kangaroos in a certain region is low, the Kangaroo-Clan will send shamans to that area to commune with the Earth through the Dreaming, in hopes of increasing the kangaroo spirit. (Layton, 1977).

The final grouping unit, the tribe, describes those clans who unite through a shared language. Tribes often boast membership numbers over one thousand, and exist to maintain consistency throughout several land regions and clans. Geographic location can also significantly affect a tribe’s size. Naturally, those tribes closest to large bodies of water will have an abundance of resources, and therefore people, whereas desert tribes in the Central regions will experience population densities as low as one person per 100sq miles (Chee-Ngala, 1997).The tribe is not an easily defined group, as many people marry across tribal lines as well. This practice represents socially the true depth of spiritual ties felt by the Aboriginal people for the Earth. The individual is not limited by man-made boundaries when the needs of the ancestral spirits call him to action. Western anthropologists have found it difficult to study Aboriginal society and culture for this reason, because the Aboriginal does not operate according to Western norms (Spencer & Gillen, 1968).

To better understand how the Dreamtime functions within tribal society, let us now examine a specific tribe. The Arrernte tribes of central Australia live in the Northern Territory state, in the region east of Alice Springs. Five different dialects connect the various Arrernte tribes, including Eastern and Central Arrernte. There are roughly 1800 speakers of Eastern and Central Arrernte, making its tribe one of Australia’s largest (Spencer & Gillen, 1968).  The Arrernte tribe is more populous today than thousands of years ago primarily because of advances in transportation systems and food portability. Historically, the Aboriginal people are a hunter/gather society, but modern technology has changed that somewhat. The Arrernte people, for example, shop in Alice Springs for groceries, clothing, and other goods. They also own motor vehicles, hold jobs within the community, and use the internet (Flannery, 2004). Though separated by belief and custom from the European Australians, the Aborigines view these once-strangers as now-brothers (Hiatt, 1996). If, as the Dreamtime creation myth explains, the ancestral spirits created all the Earth’s creatures, then practitioners of Western culture are equal to those of non-Western ancestry.

Directly south of this territory is the famed Ayer’s Rock, the world’s largest monolith, and an extremely sacred site to the Aboriginal people. Ayer’s Rock, called “Uluru” by the Aborigines, is fundamental to many Dreamings, and is suggested by some as the rock from which Ungambikula shaped the first humans (Brown, 2002). To the Arrernte, the Dreamtime, or “altyerre” in Eastern Arrernte language (Chee-Ngala, 1997), is closely associated with Uluru. The Arrernte have several stories explaining the various rock formations and colors littering this sacred site. One such tale speaks of Tjati, the ancestral spirit of a small, red lizard. Tjati left his home and travelled to Uluru in search of another ancestral spirit so they might talk and play. Upon arriving at Uluru, Tjati threw his “kali,” a curved throwing stick (sometimes called a boomerang), towards the large rock. Instead of returning to him, the kali became lodged in the rock’s surface. Tjati used his hands to dig deeply in the rock, attempting to retrieve his kali, and from his efforts left a series of hollows in the rock face. He was unsuccessful in his quest, and saddened by is failure, laid down at the foot of Uluru and died. His body turned to stone, and his remains can be seen by all who visit Uluru (Crystal, 1995)

Christine I. Keller.
Copyright © 2001 by University of North Texas. All rights reserved.
Revised: 24 Nov 2007 11:10:29 -0600

Dreamtime Totemic Bark

Showing soul of the dead combining with the spirit of the living,

from the book:

Creation Stories of the Manggalili Clan, by Narritjin Maymuru, 1960

Aboriginal Cave Art,
found at Uluru

Ancestral Spirit in The Dreaming

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