Aboriginal Dreamtime

Eternal Dreamtime and Totems
How Dreaming Guides Everyday Life,
includes totems, tribal organization, and specific tribal examples

Corroborees
Purpose, Components, and Examples,
includes music, art, and social connections

Aboriginal Creation Myth
Ancestral Spirits and Shaping the World,
includes Aboriginal depictions of the Ancestral Spirits and composite Creation Myth

Aboriginal Art
Cave Drawings, Modern Art, and Portraits,
includes a spiritual map describing the link between the Human, Physical, and Sacred worlds

Digital Bibliography

According to Aboriginal epistemology, the creation of “being” came through what is commonly referred to as “The Dreaming.” This central tie binds all Aboriginal people, and is the foundation of most of their history and culture. The Dreaming, also called “Dreamtime, Eternal Dreamtime, and The Law” (Globus, 1994), describes the Aboriginal concept of the intangible link between the Earth and its peoples, animals, and natural features, such as mountains and oceans.

The Dreaming is an experiential and performative oral tradition containing all that is sacred, wise, and true to the Aboriginal people, derived from otherworldly messages from the ancestral spirits of the Earth. Through art, rituals, and performative storytelling, these messages are celebrated within the tribe and passed on to future generations. The Aboriginal social patterns of the present age are directly based on lessons learned from these sacred stories, called the “Dreamtime Law.”

When several tribes gather for religious ceremonies, the dreams of each tribe are performed for one another, thus adding to the culture of the Aboriginal people as a whole. The Aboriginal people refer to these performances as corroborees.