Australian Indigenous Societies Prior To Invasion
UNIT CU401
Assessment 2 The Dreaming
The two aspects of Indigenous Australian culture I have chosen to look at are initiation, (both of boys and of men of high degree), and art or creative expression.
Initiation:
In the novel, "Kimberley Warrior, The Story Of Jandamarra," a
simplistic description of the initiation activities for you men is given
by the author, John Nicholson. Being a white Australian he can have no
actual experience of this process but he does cover much of what is commonly
known of the type of events that occurred during a traditional Aboriginal
boy's initiation into manhood.
The boy had to live for many months away from his family. He had many many things to learn from the older men.They guided him along the 'story line' for his country.They taught him the spiritual significance of each rock, river and cave. they taught him the arts of tracking and hunting, and the behaviour of each animal. The most respected elders taught the laws and rules and taboos of the boy's tribe. He had clearly explained to him the laws of marriage and relationships and the complex web of family and clan obligations. Finally the boy had to endure the pain of his 'coming out' ceremony. Often this involved, on top of lack of food and sleep, painful slashes being cut across chest and abdomen.(Nicholson, 1997 page 18).
The significant thing in this list is the fact that at initiation
the boy had to learn the metaphysical aspects of his country and the spiritual
reasons behind the laws that governed his people. In a record made by Tankli,
a Kunai of the Brataua clan, as recorded in "Shamanic Voices," we get an
Aboriginal version of the events surrounding a more advanced initiation,
an initiation into becoming a Mulla-mullung or 'Clever Man/Doctor.'
He obtained his powers through three intricate initiatory dreams.
On all three occasions, the ancestoral ghost of his father visited him
to assist him in acquiring the knowledge an power appropriate to becoming
a "Medicine Man."
In the last of these dreams Tankli was taken on a journey to the
otherworld by means of a magical cord made of whale sinew. Here is a record
o some of those events in Tankli's own words:
"When I was a big boy, about getting whiskers...I had some dreams
about my father...he came with his brother and a lot of other
men, and dressed me up with lyre-bird's feathers, round my head. The second
time they were all rubbed over with (Naial)red ochre, and were wearing
Bridda-briddas." Then after a magic/mystical journey through rocks Tankli
says, "my father showed me a lot of bright things like glass, on the walls
and told me to take some. He later taught me how to make these things go
into my legs. He also taught me how to throw them at people... after
this my father and the old men took me back to the camp and put me on top
of a big tree... After a while when I woke up I found I was
lying on a limb of a big tree... then I found I had some of the bright
stuff my father had given me in my hand. It was like glass. We call it
Kiin. I told all the old men about it and they said that I was a doctor.
From that time I could pull things out of people and could throw
the Kiin like light in the evening at people, saying to it Blappan(go!).
i have caught several in that way." (Halifax, 1991,pp 124/125). Frequently
in details of Aboriginal initiation activities the initiates encounters
the spirit realm and learns of the spiritual significance of much that
heretofore he has thought of as common. The initiate is in fat being initiated
into the Dreaming.
The effectiveness of initiation depends on the boy truly believing that he will, in the course of his initiation, encounter a Dreamtime power who will destroy him and after dying he will be restored to life. Each tribe has a myth that reveals the details of this process. (Lawlor,1991, page185). According to the Wiridthuri of southern NSW, boys who reach a certain age are handed over to Dhuramoolan, who is described as a direct relation of the All-Father.
The heart of all traditional Aboriginal initiation into manhood is a mythic story that reveals the details of its own initiatic process, which is related and dramatised while the novice is in the trancelike state. It can be the myth of Dhuramoolan above, who 'butchers the boys, burns them to ashes and then restores them to full manhood again." Or it can be other myths in which kangaroos or emus journey and have adventures with the Ancestors. in this state of heightened sensibility, the boy receives these instructions and stories into his unconscious awareness at very deep levels. He is living the Dreamtime experience.
Writing of the making of a medicine man and his initiation into this "High Degree" Elkin says of the chosen one: "he does not see everything at one time, or even during the main series of initiation rites...many years are needed for the purpose (of what is learned) is not simply to interest the "new man" and to enhance his personality, but also to preserve the sacred heritage, and to ensure the future of the tribe. For what is revealed to him is the complex of rites, chants, sacred sites, myths and sanctions of behaviour, on which its life and future are believed to depend. This is usually summed up in one word such as Altjiringa, Djugur, Karadjeri, Unggud or Maratal...this word signifies the "eternal dream-time" which is both a time and a state of life.It denotes the time and power of the tribal cult heroes, who are still present, though they performed their mighty works in the long past." (Elkin, 1977, page 4).
Among the Arunta Aboriginals in the western desert the person
destined to be a medicine man seeks out a cave inhabited by the Iruntarinia,
the spirits of the ancestors who lived in Alcheringa, the Dreamtime.
For it is these spirits who will initiate him into becoming a
man of High Degree(medicine man). He lies down at the mouth of the cave
waiting until one of the spirits appears, piercing him with a spear through
the back of the neck until the spear emerges at the mouth, perforating
the tongue. this hole in his tongue doesn't heal and is accepted as a physical
sign of a medicine man. How the hole in the tongue comes about is unclear,
but it is generally large enough to put one's little finger through it.
The spirit of the ancestor then pierces the initiate with a second spear,
sideways from ear to ear.
The initiate is then taken in the cave where the Iruntarinia operates on his body, taking out his organs and replacing them with new ones. When he awakes he appears briefly to have succumbed to madness but this doesn't last long. He is returned to his tribe by the ancestors and thereafter has the gift of seeing the spirits. In addition to this he has a collection of Atoongara(stones given him by the ancestors) which he projects into the body of a patient during healing ceremonies in order to fight the evil forces in the body that are causing the sickness.
During the sacred Dreamtime, the material limitations and physical restrictions of ordinary people do not exist. The novice, during initiation returns to his primordial state by contacting the spirits of his ancestors. During this ceremonial time he thus gets a taste of the sacred nature of being, of timeless age, accessible to anyone who knows how to open himself to it.(Kalweit 1988, page 102).
During initiation the sacred Dreamtime has turned a boy into a
man , or in the case of initiation as a medicine man, it has turned a mature
man into a healer.
Creative Expression:
For the purpose of this paper I have largely limited my look
at creative expression, to art. Although the same principles outlined below
could apply to Indigenous music, dance and dress/body painting/scarification.
Like sexuality Aboriginal art takes three forms: personal art, social art and sacred or ritual art. In general all graphic elements in traditional art have gender. For example the circle is feminine and the straight line is masculine. This two fold, gender-based division extends to various methods or styles of art produced across traditional Aboriginal Australia, as well as to the allocation of some methods and images to the visible world and others to the world of the Dreaming.
It is in the context of sacred art however that the traditional creative expression is most closely linked to the Dreaming. Sacred art always implies "transformation: the transformation of pure energy into form, the transformation of ancestoral powers in animals, animals in humans, and humans, through ritual costume and body painting, into the ancestral beings and their animal powers. The cultural heroes or the great Ancestors, though their acts of miraculous transformation, created the species, varieties, and order of the world. Transformation in sacred art recalls the potency of the Dreamtime." (Lawlor, 1991, page 289). A study of Aboriginal sacred art will reveal that it can designate transformation in a number of different ways. For example, a kangaroo in a painting may wear a hair belt or other item of apparel associated with humans. Such attributes indicates consciousness transformed into a spirit of another species.
It is important to understand that the ambiguity and transformative
properties of both life and symbol are fundamental to the Aboriginal sense
of reality. In sacred art, the dreamtime ancestors actually live within
the transformative images. "The image is the vehicle, indeed, for the body
and presence, of the fertilising power of the Ancestors on earth."(Lawlor,
1991, page
291).
As Aboriginal elder, Mussolini Harvey pointed out to John Bradley
in 1988, "The Dreamings are our ancestors, no matter if they are fish,
birds, men women, animals, wind or rain. It was these Dreamings that made
our Law...and our Law is not like European Law, which is always changing...
our law cannot change.
All things in our country have Law, they have ceremony and song, and
they have people who are related to them...
The Dreamings named all the country and the sea as they travelled, they named everything that they saw. As the Dreamings travelled they put spirit children(ardirri), over the country. It is because of these spirit children that we are born, the spirit children are on the country, and we are born from the country.
In our ceremonies we wear marks on our bodies, they come from the Dreaming too, we carry the design that the Dreamings gave to us. When we wear that Dreaming mark we are carrying the country, we are keeping the Dreaming held up, we are keeping the country and the Dreaming alive. That is the most important thing, we have to keep up the country, the Dreamings, our Law, our people, it can't change..." (quoted from John Bradley's Yanyuwa Country, in "Nourishing Terrains," page 27)
In David Lockwood's "I, the Aboriginal, the story of the Phillip Roberts, or Waipuldanya, includes a description of the Kunapipi corroborees in Arnham land's Roper river, Alawa country. Roberts is the traditional High Djungayi of this ceremony and as such is the "Boss" of the ceremony and in this capacity has the equivalent of royal rank.
One of his tasks in this role is to inspect the ceremonial articles
- the hair belts, the feathers, the paintings, the body decorations - before
giving permission for the kunapipi ceremony to proceed. Often Roberts also
acted himself as the make up artist, because it was the Djungayi who ordered
the daubing of the dancers bodies with human blood and white goose feathers.
(Normally the blood for this purpose was donated by Roberts.)
It is very clear from this book and from his description of the
preparation for, and the actual performance of, the ceremony just how important
the creative decorations were to its success.
These decorations allowed the dancers to become the Ancestoral
"Owls," for example. Here in Robert's words is his impression of part of
the ceremony:
"'Jaulwoku, I ordered. 'The Owls.'
The Songman began his chant about owls and the dancers joined
in, weaving, be-patterned bodies glistening in the campfire's light, arms
raised in supplication, circling, hissing beating their calloused feet
against the earth in time with the boomerang sticks... Clouds of dust rose
and settled over old Puala (the Songman), but he was aware only of the
repetitive chant. it folded back to engulf the dancers, but they were oblivious
of everything except the voluptuous rhythm, their hearts pulsating with
the out-rush of released emotion as the reverberating ground, pounded by
tautened legs, called them back to the Creative Earth mother and the Rainbow
Serpent, female and male, primeval symbols of fertility and procreation."
(Lockwood, 1962, page 87).
In attempting to understand Aboriginal creative expression, art in particular, it is important to remember that Aborigines throughout Australia developed a particular way of coping with their environment. They brought it into their own social perspective, collectively humanising its non-human ingredients.(Berndt, 1982, page 21). Berndt goes on to explain why they did this by claiming that this allowed Aborigines to come to terms with it , placing it within a social context and imbuing it with meaning in relationship to themselves. In this way the unknown could be made known, the unfamiliar made familiar.
Berndt goes on significantly pointing out that this mantle of meaning is especially important in regard to the visual arts. What Aborigines represented through the medium of painting on bark or stone, or through sculpture, had a symbolic significance. On one hand they had depicted what was explicable in terms of itself. Irrespective of the cultural art style used in the given area. It could be identified as an example of a particular natural species, or natural phenomenom. However, note, Berndt claims more importantly "it could be identified as having additional or symbolic meanings, because a socio-cultural belief system had been superimposed upon the natural world as part of the carefully organised, comprehensible world of human beings. people saw themselves in association with aspects of nature - often, but not always, in mythological terms. Their world was vibrant with natural, visible living things. But it was also vibrant with supernatural or mythic beings and their agents or intermediaries, expressed through such natural living creatures, including humans. Such beings were the basic core of what is often called the Dreaming. (Berndt, 1982, page 21).
When Aborigines, carved or painted or carried out other forms
of creative expression what was being done was spiritually relevant to
them and in general was a spiritual event, directly linked to the Dreaming.
References:
Berndt, R. & Berndt, C., "Aboriginal Australian Art: A Visual perspective," (Methuan, Melbourne), 1982.
Elkin, A.P., "Aboriginal Men Of High Degree,"(University Of Queensland Press, Brisbane),1977 edition.
Halifax, J.,"Shamanic Voices," (Arkana, New York), 1979.
Kalweit, H., "Dreamtime &Inner Space," (Shambhala, Boston &London), 1988.
Lawlor, R., "Voices Of The First Day," (Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont), 1991.
Lockwood, D., "I, The Aboriginal,"(Rigby, Melbourne), 1962.
Nicholson, J., "Kimberley Warrior," (Allen & Unwin, Sydney), 1997.
Rose, D., B., "Nourishing Terrains,"(Australian Heritage Commission,
Canberra), 1996.
Alec James Ward
