Aboriginal Mythology. Mudrooroo

      Introduction

      There are over 300,000 Australian Aborigine people, divided into many clans, language groups and local communities. They are related by kin ties, either biological or classificatory. Kinship was and is the tie which binds the communities, not only to each other, but to the stars above and the earth below and the plants, the animals, the very rocks and landscape. To the Aboriginal person, the entire universe is permeated with life – it is a living, breathing biomass which has separated into families. There are families of stars, of trees and of animals, and these are connected to our human families. Our way of life is spiritual in that there is an interconnectedness, an interrelatedness with all existence, existence extending from the merely physical realms to the spiritual, encapsulated in the term ‘the Dreaming’. The Dreaming is a continuous process of creation which began in the long ago period called the ‘Dreamtime’, when the physical features of the land were formed by creative beings who were neither human or animal, but had the attributes of both. It was through the actions of these primordial ancestors that flora and fauna, including humanity, evolved. It was also from this time and from these ancestors that rites and ceremonies came into being. Sacred places were formed, where certain actions occurred and where the ancestors left part of their energy (djang), which may be actualized in the present through rites and ceremonies to ensure that the species of creation remain abundant.

      The ancestors also set in place the often complicated and formal kinship system, to which all the species of creation belong. This order has survived in many Aboriginal communities to this day. It was and is never exclusive, so outsiders may be adopted into the structure and given a place and a family designation which impose obligations as a family member. Thus, before the coming of the British, Indonesian persons who visited the northern shores of Australia were taken into the kinship system. When the British settlers came, those who established friendly relations were also taken into the family groups. It is because of this non-exclusivity that the blood which flows through our veins is a mixture of Malay, Chinese, European and any others who have been taken into our kinship system.

      Aboriginal people believe that they have lived in Australia from the beginning of all things and archaeologists have dated the human occupancy of Australia back many tens of thousands of years to the time when Australia was part of a huge mass of land connected with New Guinea and parts of Asia. This has been named Gondwanaland and identified with the ancient legendary continent of Mu. So it may be said that the Aboriginal people’s occupancy of this great south land really does extend back to the Dreamtime.

      The culture and physique of the Australian Aborigines reflect the environment of Australia with its many climates and terrains, the stark beauty of its deserts and the overabundance of its rain forests. An Aboriginal population map of Australia shows the people spread across the land in small bands of hunters and gatherers, moving with the seasons or when necessity demanded and remaining stationary for long periods when food was plentiful. The people can be roughly divided into two groups: sea people, those who relied on the waters and coastline for their sustenance; and land people, those who inhabited areas away from the coasts and lived off the resources of the land. This division is also found in the mythology. Among coastal people there are stories of cultural heroes arriving from across the sea bringing new ways of thought, while among the land people ancestral and cultural heroes come from the land and either return to the land or ascend into the skies. A common trait of such ancestral and cultural heroes is the journeys they undertake, some for incredible distances, and this on foot, or under the earth, or through the air.

      Each community, clan or family group owned its own estate, large or small depending on the climate and environment. It was believed that their estate had been given to them at the very beginning of time, when the ancestors created the landscape and established the laws and customs which governed family and interfamily relationships.

      Not only had the land, the laws and customs been given to the different families, but also their languages. There were once hundreds of different languages and dialects, and many people were multi-lingual, for each language, having been given to the individual family groups by the ancestors, had to be maintained by their descendants. Marriage laws played a large part in making Aborigines multi-lingual. Marriage was exogamous and women went to live with the family of the groom, who often spoke a different language. There was and still is a reciprocity between different family groups and marriage was important in maintaining and strengthening this, especially in regard to hunting and food gathering rights. Reciprocity networks extended across Australia and, although on occasion there were family squabbles, ceremonies such as the Rom and Fire ceremony sought to regulate the peace. Because of the huge size of Australia, however, to speak of a unified Aboriginal race is wrong to say the least. As the land, the climate, the environment varied, so did the various families living on their estates.

      History was slow and even for thousands of years, though the coming and going of the ice age from 10,000 to 6,000 years ago must have resulted in as much change to the Aboriginal population as it did to the climate and the environment. In 1788, there occurred an event of momentous importance to all Aboriginal people: a party of British soldiers and convicts under the command of Governor Phillip landed in the country of the Eora people. This first landing was followed by others at various places along the coast, and the landings turned into a veritable invasion as Aboriginal family groups found themselves deprived of their land and even shot if they tried to defend their land rights. Bloodshed and turmoil followed, with the Aboriginal population being drastically thinned out, especially along the eastern coastline, where the survivors found themselves strangers in their own land. Missionaries came to ‘civilize’ us. We were forbidden to speak our own languages and were collected together into reserves and missions. We were massacred and murdered everywhere and the marks of that 200-odd year history are still with us. It is only now that we are seeking self-determination for ourselves and trying to protect and revitalize our languages, culture and way of life against those who still rule us.

      Many Aboriginal groups are very conservative in that they believe that laws and customs passed down from the ancestors are the best which can be followed. They are slow to accept change and if they do so, these changes must be accommodated to the belief systems passed down through the ages: what was good for the ancestors was and is good for their descendants. Thus the hunting and gathering way of life persists to this day, especially in northern and central Australia, where the British had little impact. Along the northern coastlines before the coming of the British, the Aboriginal people of Cape York traded with the Melanesian people living in the Torres Strait and New Guinea. The Melanesians planted crops and tended gardens, used bows and arrows and beat on drums. The northern Aboriginal people took the bow and arrow and the drum into their ceremonies, but made no other use of them, for the hunting and gathering system worked well. In other places and among other groups, however, this way of life was quickly put an end to when our lands were taken from us.

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