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5 A popular and sustained view of Aboriginal society and culture has been and remains that it is essentially spiritual. Concepts like the ‘Dreaming" or ‘Dreamtime", stories relating to localised supernatural beings (the Wagurl in Western Australia, the bunyip in eastern or south-eastern Australia and the Djanggawul of northeast Arnhem Land to mention just a few) are known and appreciated by informed Australians. Indigenous relationships to land are commonly represented in spiritual terms. For example, until recently, the ocial Australian Government website, informed the world that ‘For Indigenous Australians, the land is the core of all spirituality and this relationship and the spirit of “country" is [sic] central to the issues that are important to Indigenous people today". 1

Accounts of Aboriginal religion,

beliefs and practices are common in the anthropological literature, both as classic ethnographies as well as shorter accounts in edited volumes and academic journals. Tourist bookstalls carry popular accounts of ‘Aboriginal Dreamtime stories", children"s picture books and illustrated narratives, many of which are authored by Indigenous Australians. In short, across the spectrum of popular and academic publication (digital, as well as hard copy) 1 e quotation came from the Australian Government"s website (www.australia.gov.au/about- australia/australian-story/austn-indigenous-cultural-heritage, accessed 9 December 2016), which has since been removed and replaced by a short catalogue of services and general information about

‘Indigenous culture and history" (see www.australia.gov.au/information-and-services/culture-and-arts/

indigenous-culture-and-history). e website of the Australian Human Rights Commission, on the

other hand, states that ‘Native title is a property right which reects a relationship to land which is

the very foundation of Indigenous religion, culture and well-being" (see www.humanrights.gov.au/our-

work/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-social-justice/projects/native-title, accessed 13 March 2018).

Aboriginal religious beliefs and practices are as much in evidence as the koala and the kangaroo, while the iconic Uluru is commonly represented asthe embodiment of Indigenous spirituality and belief. 2 ?is apparent privileging of Aboriginal belief and practice has its downsides. Beyond the academic work produced by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal scholars, popular culture has commoditised Aboriginal spirituality and has often shown a scant regard for authenticity or accuracy.?is has led to misunderstandings and ev en trivialisation ofsome aspects of belief and practice. In turn, the classic ethnographies of Aboriginal ritual practices 3 provide ready examples of the richness and diversity of ritual practices in some remote areas of Aboriginal Australia. ?is wealth of ritual and belief is not reected in the ethnography of many native title claimant groups whose ritual practices are either substantially diminished or, as is the case in many rural and urban areas, no longer a partof contemporary practice. In a native title business that requires proof oftraditionality, such comparisons are odious. Given the centrality of religious belief and practice to Indigenous Australianculture, it is self-evident that the subject should be discussed in any report written in relation to a native title application. However, as withall other ethnography discussed in this book, the account has to be relevant to native title questions. In writing a native title report, an account of the claimants" religious beliefs and practices will not, of itself, provide a basis for the provision of an expert view as to the continuity of law and customs that relate to rights to country. Moreover, the prominence aorded to Aboriginal spirituality and the manner of its representation, particularly in the popular media, may require that the account clari es issues and that it provides a corrective to popular misconceptions. Treatment of the eld data may also require accepting and admitting that the ethnography relied upon reveals a religious life somewhat diminished in scope and content when compared with the earlier accounts of customary mytho-ritual performance as witnessed and recounted by mid-century anthropologists. ?is may have the potential to weaken the claims of right, but is a matter that cannot be neglected. 2 See, for example, uluru-australia.com/about-uluru/uluru-and-aboriginal-culture - along with advertisements for Kangaroo Island, Broome"s Cable Beach and women"s fashion garments. Accessed

9 December 2016.

3 For example, Berndt"s Kunapipi (1951), Djanggawul (1952); and Meggitt"s Gadjari (1966).

Many other examples could be cited.

5 ?e content of an expert or connection report will, of course, depend upon the ethnography available. No two reports, then, will be the same. ?ecomparative process, whereby present practice and belief is compared with documented past practice will also be determined by the availability of materials in the early literature. In some cases such accounts will be very limited or perhaps altogether absent. In these cases the writer will have to rely on early accounts from a neighbouring area (if available) or from the scholarly literature for comparable areas of Aboriginal Australia. Claimant testimony that beliefs and practices have been a part of their culture ‘for ever" may have some value in supporting the continuity argument. However, a discerning critic of the application is likely to evoke views relating to the shallowness of the oral tradition and its potential for transmutation, as I discuss in the next chapter of this book (see Chapt er6, ‘Native title research and oral testimony"). As with other aspects of the laws and customs of the claimants, an expert view supporting their continuity through time really does need to rely, at least in part, on independent archival or ethnographic data. ?is process may attract its own problems. When reviewing the early literature in relation to a practice or belief that is known now to be entirely absent, there is little point in providing adetailed account of the practice if the conclusion will be that it is no longer a part of the contemporary account. Better to note its past occurrence and then state that its absence today is an evident loss of customary practice. I have read reports that detail past practices at length, only to conclude that the ritual is long gone, so rendering the historical account redundant. In native title writing, cultural losses require neither explanation nor excuse, but should, nonetheless, be openly and clearly admitted without requiring the reader to labour through descriptions ofpractices long abandoned. Given the comments I have set down in the preceding paragraphs, it is essential that the writer of a native title report makes clear exactly what is meant by words or phrases that may commonly occur in the popular literature or might otherwise be subject to uncertainty or possible misunderstanding. ?is serves to anchor the ensuing account to key concepts evident in the ethnography, as well as helping to demonstrate that the beliefs and practices constitute a system with normative content and a structured form and process. ?is may also serve to counter the perception common in early accounts that Aboriginal belief and practice did not constitute a proper religion, but was magic or superstition - aperception that is not altogether absent in some circles today. Australian Indigenous languages often have a term that roughly translates to ‘the creative period of the Dreaming".

Jukurpa

is common in areas of theWestern Desert, but bugarigara, ngaranggani and munguny are commonfurther west. I have recorded the term mura in northeast South

Australia and southwest Queensland and

ularaka from the Lake Eyre

Basin.

4 Inthe Yindjibarndi language (central Pilbara region of Western Australia) a phrase is employed that can be translated as ‘when the world was soft", being descriptive of the state of the country as it was believed to have been in this creative time. ?ese terms (and many others besides) carry a range of meanings depending on the context of their use but all provide afoundation concept for Aboriginal religious belief that underpin a range of spiritual beliefs, practices and concepts. Dreaming, as represented by the Indigenous term is, in part, regarded as a period of time in the far distant past. During this time extraordinary events took place at certain locations typically eected by mythic 5 beings with extraordinary capabilities. ?ese events fashioned aspects of the claimants" physical, social and cultural world, providing an explanation and mandate for aparticular cultural practice (like a ritual, prescribed behaviour between classes of kin or way of gutting an animal) or natural phenomenon (like a hill, rock, river or plain) today. Anyone who has worked with Aboriginal people in Australia in remote as well as rural and urban areas is likely to be familiar with these aspects of belief as they are found commonly in daily discourse. Notable in this regard is the idea that country was rst allocated to human groups in the Dreaming and has subsequently been ‘handed down" through the generations to the present Indigenous owners. 4

Cf. Elkin 1934, 176, 181.

5 As far as I know, the term ‘mythic" was introduced into the literature by Ronald and Catherine Berndt (see, for example, R.M. Berndt 1970, 218, 219; Berndt and Berndt 1993, 223.) but was

not used in their earlier work where ‘mythical" seems to have been preferred (e.g. Berndt and Berndt

1964, 189). While ‘mythic" suers from the same imperfections as ‘myth", its substitution for the

more common ‘mythical" may serve to alleviate the pejorative connotations of the latter. Inlectures

Ronald Berndt used to speak of ‘my-thick" beings, so the word had little resemblance to the cognate

‘mythical".

5 Dreaming is dynamically manifest in the present and its spirituality traverses the temporal dimension such that it is neither solely of the past nor the present. As a reference to potent spirituality, the term may be used to denote a manifestation of contemporary sanctity derived from the creative era. Spirituality evident within place is attributed to events of the distant past but is elementally contemporary and a part of present experience. Consistent with this concept, Dreaming (or its Indigenous equivalent) can also be used to denote a particular relationship between a person and the natural world (a place or a natural species), which is readily understood as a totemic association. ?ese preliminary comments relating to the concept of ‘the Dreaming" should serve to illustrate that the popular view of the Dreaming as some quasi-romantic period steeped in myth and legend and being the stu ofchildren"s stories egregiously misrepresents the ethnographic reality. Ihave worked with some claimants who refuse to use the term ‘Dreamtime" for this very reason. ?e word Dreaming is probably the better choice than ‘Dreamtime" as the former at least represents the sense of the recent and continuous aspects of the belief. Terms from the claimants" own language may also have advantages when used in native title discourse, but if this choice is adopted the word chosen must be accurately de ned. ?e spiritual power of the Dreaming is neither passive nor benevolent. Common to all Aboriginal groups with which I have worked is the belief that there is a potent spiritual force present within the countryside or evoked in ritual practice. ?ings of the Dreaming are sacred and their substance sacrosanct. A place, then, that is believed to have been created in the Dreaming and has continuing Dreaming characteristics is sacred andis generally subject to rules that govern visitation or use. In writing of such things, care needs to be taken to distinguish the idea of sanctity from the ideal of the secret as the two terms are sometimes conated in popular use, yielding a sort of hybrid ‘secret-sacred" notion that obfuscates the system of belief and action that characterises Aboriginal religious belief in this regard. While all aspects of the Dreaming are ‘sacred", not all are‘secret". Terms from the claimants" own language are helpful in any analysis of these concepts. In parts of the northwest of Western Australia and east into the desert areas, potent Dreaming spirituality is identi ed by the term ngurlu , a term used to refer to phenomena that are potentially spiritually dangerous to those not quali ed to encounter them. In parts of the Western Desert, the concept is expressed by use of the term milmilpa while other languages have their own terms. Such words carry the meaning of being restricted and not open to some people (usually women and children), and content so characterised is thus esoteric. Spiritual danger within country (a manifestation of the Dreaming) is a determinant of how country can be accessed, exploited and managed. ?e term for spiritual danger is a lso used to refer to a place associated with esoteric and restricted activities like a ritual ground where gender-speci c activities are known to take place and it is also used to refer to ritual items, knowledge of which is restricted to senior ritually quali ed men. ?e term is thus a means of referring to such items without making a direct reference to them and so functions as a euphemism. Since these matters are so sensitive, however, no mention is made of ngurlu (meaning objects) in the presence of women. Esoteric and highly restricted objects are manifestations of Dreaming and may also articulate a spiritual relationship between a person and a place. ?e usefulness of such data in the native title context may be limited by the need for strict con dentiality when discussing such material. I t isquotesdbs_dbs17.pdfusesText_23