The Land Aboriginal spirituality and its inextricable connection

The Land Aboriginal spirituality and its inextricable connection to the land

Aborigines regard land as sacred

Places on earth share • in the sacredness of Dreaming as they were formed in their present shape by the journeys of the Ancestor Beings.

Relationship between Ancestor Beings and the features of the country is the result of three types of transformation:

Three types of formation • Metamorphosis • Imprinting • Externalisation

Metamorphosis • The body of the ancestor is changed into a material object.

Metamorphosis

Imprinting • The ancestor leaves the impression of his body or some tool he uses.

Externalisation • The ancestor takes some object out of his body

To the Aborigines • The land is not dead. • It is alive with power and the Ancestors who live in it. • The land is the Ancestors and, as long as the land lives, • So do the Ancestors.

For indigenous Australians • The land is the core of all spirituality

Land use and ownership

For Aborigines • Ownership of the land means that they have a responsibility to care for and nurture it.

The land • and all the forms of life it contains are regarded as a sacred trust, • to be preserved and passed on in a timeless cycle of mutual dependence.

Two uses of land Economic use (food & water) Ritual use (repository of secret/sacred stories) A group will have land over which they regularly search for food and water.

People will be familiar • with the important ritual features of all that land, • but they may not have responsibility for it all. • The area of land which they do have responsibility is their ritual estate

• It is this ritual estate that is an Aborigine’s country (My country) • and contains the sites of spiritual significance or sacred sites. • It is the learning of the story of one’s country that is a life long process that brings with it even greater rights and responsibilities.

In a very rich environment • The group will be able to live entirely within its estate

But in most cases • It will be necessary to travel over the lands of other groups in search of food and water.

Great care must be taken • not to break the laws of these people • sacred sites must not be approached, • nor can a person talk publicly about the story of that country. • A person is safest in their own country where they know their rights and responsibility.

The ritual estate • the area for which people are ritually responsible, • always forms part of the land over which people seek food.

Ownership is based upon • the division and distribution of ritual responsibility for land • rather than upon the rights to use and occupy the land.

Land boundaries • Are established by the Spirit Beings’ travels through one territory to another, • And by the transformations of Spirit beings, which are marked by the distributions of languages or dialects.

The place where • such a transformation takes place marks the boundary of a related, • yet separate land owning group.