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In the Weld Range of Western Australia there is a hole in a hillside that people have been digging red ochre out of for somewhere between 27,000 and 40,000 years. That single mine says more about how long Aboriginal Australians have kept their traditions than any argument could. Their stories on this site reach back just as far: a world dreamed into being, seven sisters running across the sky, and a coastline that the sea took away. This page gathers them.
Dreamed into existence
On Australian aborigines: The dreamer dreamed it into existence the creation story begins in stillness, with all the spirits of the earth asleep except the Father of All Spirits. He wakes the Sun Mother, who walks the bare earth until plants grow behind her, then goes into the caves to wake the insects, the fish, the reptiles, the birds and the animals, and finally rises into the sky as the sun. On Dreams: Sent by the Gods, Dreamed into Being I set that Dreamer beside the dreams of other traditions.
Dreamtime itself is not only a word for the distant past. On Dreamtime and a culture’s account of time Asangoham presents it as a First Australian account in which time and country are woven together.
The Seven Sisters
The Pleiades are the seven sisters in the songlines of many Aboriginal peoples. Seven sisters follows the versions: a male ancestor chases them across the continent from west to east, the eagle-hawk drives them into the sky in the Kimberley, a hunter in Orion pursues them in the Western Desert, and around Lake Eyre a great flood stops him. On Dreamtime stories of the Seven Sisters, Steven Strong explains why the story matters so much:
It's the beginning of everything and that's why every tribe must know that story.
Steven Strong, Seven Sisters in the Dreaming, at 16:06
On An Aboriginal telling of the Seven Sisters the elder Trudy calls the stories songlines, the memory of a family’s blood and history, and in her family’s version the sisters came for a water ceremony at a time when drinking water was scarce.
The red ochre of Wilgie Mia
On Wilgie Mia – Ancient ochre mine the mine, also called Thuwarri Thaa, was worked (65.6 feet) deep. For the Wajarri people it was made by the ancestral being Marlu, the red kangaroo: the red ochre is his blood and the yellow ochre his liver. Ochre from the mine was carried over much of Western Australia for rock art and painting.
Memories of a drowned coast
On What Are The World’s Oldest Stories? coastal groups remember a time when the shore lay much further out. The Goon giji of Cape Grafton say the Great Barrier Reef was once dry land, flooded after a man named Gona ate a forbidden fish. Sea levels were indeed lower about 10,000 years ago, and Patrick Nunn and Nicholas Reid found 21 such flood stories that match it.
Healing and law
On Secrets of Aborigine Healing & Awakening with Robbie Holz Robbie Holz tells how her husband Gary, a physicist with multiple sclerosis, walked again after ten days with Aboriginal healers who worked on body, mind and spirit together. On Tyson Yunkaporta on law, country, and empire, Tyson Yunkaporta sets Aboriginal law against the habits of empire:
Empire they're always building Towers they're always building pyramids they're always trying to create this hierarchy
Tyson Yunkaporta, Tyson Yunkaporta on Aboriginal law and country, at 30:02
Related pages
- Australian aborigines: The dreamer dreamed it into existence
- Seven sisters
- Dreamtime stories of the Seven Sisters
- Wilgie Mia – Ancient ochre mine
- What Are The World’s Oldest Stories?
- Secrets of Aborigine Healing & Awakening with Robbie Holz
- Tyson Yunkaporta on law, country, and empire
- An Aboriginal telling of the Seven Sisters
- Dreams: Sent by the Gods, Dreamed into Being
For every page I tagged with aboriginal, see the aboriginal tag archive.
