What is the Dreamtime?
While the word ‘Dreamtime’ or ‘Dreaming’ is a poor translation into English of different Indigenous words and meanings, it refers to that cosmic world that existed before human beings came to live on the earth. It includes the stories and actions of the ancestral beings that shaped the land into what it now is. For many, the Dreamtime continues to have an active, living and continuing relationship with today’s life, law and community values. Land, family and Dreamtime offer important values that continue to influence how Indigenous people live today but in new ways shaped by contact history and the many effects of secular western culture and Christianity.
