The Dreamtime, also called The Dreaming, is the central, unifying theme in Aboriginal culture . Australian Aborigines are thought to have the oldest continuously maintained cultural history on Earth (50,000 years or more); the Dreamtime explains the origins and culture of the land and of its people.

Most Aboriginal people believe that all life as we know it today (human, animal, or plant) is part of a vast and complex single network of relationships which can be traced directly back to the great spirit ancestors of the Dreamtime.

In the Aboriginal world view, every event leaves record in the land. Everything in the natural world is a result of the actions of the metaphysical beings whose actions created the world. The meaning and significance of particular places and creatures is wedded to their origin in the Dreamtime, and certain places have a particular potency, which the Aborigines call its dreaming. In this dreaming lies the sacredness of the earth.

The Dreamtime is the era before the Earth was created, and a time when everything was spirit and not physical. The Dreamtime still exists and can be accessed for spiritual purposes. Through the Dreamtime, it is possible to commune with spirits and decipher the meanings of omens and the causes of illness and other misfortune.

In one version (there are many, many Aboriginal cultures) Altjira was the god of the Dreamtime; he created the Earth and then retired as the Dreamtime vanished.

Alternative: Alchera (Aranda ), Mura-mura (Dieri), Tjukurrpa

An Opinion

Dreamtime stories perform the usual function of mythologies - giving lessons about morality and history. In Australia's harsh climate, however, they serve an additional function. They encode information about the terrain - where the waterholes are, where to find food etc. The men traditionally hold these stories secret. By this means territory is held, in that other tribes simply cannot survive in one's territory because they "do not know the dreamings" - do not know where to find water, food etc.

A tribe's culture, therefore, is not simply a matter of drawings and songs. It relates to the actual terrain. "See that hill over there? That's where the echidna-spirit slept for 3 years, and that's where we are heading now - there's water there". Information like this cannot really be passed on from one generation to the next without physically walking over the tribe's range.

Environmental change (fencing, mining, farming) and wholesale relocation of aboriginal tribes by European settlement inevitably destroys a tribe's culture by gutting its content. There is no way around this - it is a permanent and intractable problem. It furthermore leaves no role for the menfolk to occupy, causing a variety of social ills.

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See also: Aboriginal mythology