Aboriginal Art Blog
ART ARK®

As they journeyed through country, across water, underground or through the sky, Dreaming Ancestors or Creator Beings provided models or templates for all human and non-human activity and interactions, social behaviour, natural development, ethics and morality.

We’re all, it seems, familiar with the terms “Dreamtime” and “The Dreaming” in relation to Aboriginal Australian culture, but – as I noted in the first part of this series – such terms are grossly inadequate: they carry significant baggage and erase the complexities of the original concepts.

'To get an insight into us – [the Warlpiri people of the Tanami Desert] – it is necessary to understand something about our major religious belief, the Jukurrpa. The Jukurrpa is an all-embracing concept that provides rules for living, a moral code, as well as rules for interacting with the natural environment.'