The Dreaming and Songlines of Indigenous Australia

By: Helping Hands TV

“You don’t get to be the world’s oldest living continuing cultures without a great foundation of a system of law and living,” shares Education and Cultural Consultant, Brooke Prentis. 

Brooke is an Aboriginal Australian of the Wakka Wakka nation, and speaks about the relevance of the Dreaming and Songlines – significant concepts within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures – in this special Helping Hands two-part series on Indigenous Australia to coincide with NAIDOC Week. 

Brooke is joined by Adnyamathanha woman and University of Adelaide researcher, Rhanee Lester, and Gundungurra man and Indigenous Education Facilitator, Uncle David King. 

In this panel discussion, Rhanee explains the term Dreaming was coined in the 1950s by an anthropologist in Alice Springs who was trying to explain the common connection Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had to the land, and also the unique ways each nation would express their connection through culture, language, environment and history.

Rhanee explains that the Dreaming, as a term, is not an accurate description of Indigenous Australian connection to Country.  “There’s something that’s not reachable, not attainable (about the term),” says Rhanee.

“For us, as Aboriginal people, it’s embedded into our everyday lifestyle … Dreaming, to us, is telling the story of our history; how our people came to be, how creation came to be, how our land formed and our environment around us formed.” 

The Dreaming is an integral part of the foundation of Indigenous Australian cultures. It gives meaning to identity and wisdom for life on every level; individually, within community, to nations and as a people, communicating and connecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to their past, present and future, through stories. 

While the stories of the Dreaming create the foundations for life, Songlines, says David, create the connections between stories, peoples, lands and skies across Australia. 

David uses an analogy of his pathway of education from primary school through to university to explain that, for Indigenous Australians, Songlines are the classrooms of cultural learning. Their purpose is to create connections of the lands, lores, kinship processes and peoples of his Gundungurra nation, to that of their neighbours, and then further across all of Australia, along lines of cultural geography. 

The Dreaming and Songlines are always intertwined, explains Brooke, and they continue to empower Indigenous Australians today. 

“(They) are our whole system of law and living – carried through song and dance across Country,” says Brooke.  “Here we are as three Aboriginal people from various different nations, yet there’s a common thread through our systems of law and living.”