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Aboriginals

The Dreaming is a complex concept of upmost importance to the people and culture. It embraces the era from the time when the ancestral beings roamed the earth and created landforms, animals and plants. For Aboriginals the land has special significance because it does not only sustain Aboriginals in providing food and shelter but it also plays a major role in their spiritual lives. The Dreaming gives an understanding of the world and its creation, and it also determines there values and morals. The Dreaming is not a concept of time, but a class of events, for the Aborigines the term ‘Dreaming’ refers to two things ''   events which are incarnated in the stories told about various parts of the landscape or actual features of the landscape.   It is also essential to the indigenous culture because to them it explains why things are the way they are and how to live their lives.

At the beginning of every Dreaming story, ancestors had already existed, at the end of the Dreaming the ancestors did not disappear but remained and the sacred sites, thus the Dreaming is never ending as believed by the Aborigines. Another Indigenous connection to the land is seen through the connection of the land and people. This is known due to the fact the Aboriginals often say that they are born through the land, and not at a particular site. The Dreaming story about the creation of the Darling River begins with an ancestral spirit already living up in the sky. Guthi-guthi created the land and plants and animals, released a water serpent that created the river. This land is scared to some, and Aborigines believe if the ancestral spirits get angry then consequences will occur and they are part of the land so they, therefore look after it and do not harm the land, depending on what the morals and laws of the story are.

There are other connections between people and land. The tribe that inhabited a particular area was responsible for a particular animal, plant or land mark through which an...

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