Dreaming

To Indigenous Australians, Dreaming is everything. Everything that is, was, and will be. They see themselves as part of the natural world, but also a part of something bigger.

I first ran across ‘Dreaming’ stories when I arrived in Alice Springs. It is what we find so amazing about the art: so intriguing about the culture.

Alice is Caterpillar Dreaming country. The McDonnell Ranges that surround Alice sort of look like a caterpillar. There are wonderful stories about how the mountain range came to be.

People get their Dreaming stores from that place where the mother first felt the child move. Their Dreaming provides them with the laws they are to live by: their moral framework, their very being. When you ask an Indigenous person about their country, you are asking about their Dreaming. You are asking them who they are, at the very deepest level.

Dreaming provides a time and place where common language groups can be together, holding on to and exploring their culture, life. Aboriginal art was born in the Dreaming: drawings in the sand, rocks, on the body or on the bark of trees. Dreaming tells the stories of how the earth came to be, as well as the future of the planet and the people on it.

Time is not linear in dreams: it just is.

Down the road from Alice, where the dot painting movement began, in Pupunya, it is Honey Ant dreaming: those ants with their swollen butts full of nectar.

Kangaroo Dreaming: Guanna dreaming.

I can sort of understand it. Indigenous Cultures in Canada relate to animals: and they use them in their Totems, their clans, their spirit guides. They use animals to explain the origins of landscape, of time, of being: Raven, Bear, Killer Whale. They are all there.

I am not sure if there was any dreaming in WJ. This lack of tradition could be because the community was created from the evolution of the cattle stations. Once a fair wage policy was introduced in Australia, many ranchers could no longer afford their Aboriginal workers. Some were just let go adrift while others provided these families with a piece of land and washed their hands of them.

No more dreams.

And here in Kununurra? Well, I went for a walk yesterday, through Hidden Valley. I had to pay five dollars to the indigenous people: the traditional land owners.

And then I saw the sign: Welcome to Head Lice Dreaming.

Yes folks! That’s what it has come to.

And that is just one of the reasons I am looking toward China for my next adventure.

Head Lice Dreaming.

So much for the romanticism of this area!

Head Lice Dreaming Indeed!