News — Dreamtime

Few stories capture people’s imagination like that of the “Seven Sisters”. The Seven Sisters Story is told by aboriginal people all over Australia. The stories vary from area to area, but one common factor is that the Seven Sisters are always watchful or running away from the unwelcome advances of a male (Orion). In NSW, the sisters are called Mayi-mayi. Mayi-mayi were chased by a man called Wurunna. He succeeds in catching two of the women by using trickery. Eventually they escape and rise up into the sky forming the star constellation we know as Pleiades. In the Kimberley area,...

The Dreamtime or Dreaming for Australian Indigenous people refers to the time when the Ancestral Spirits moved across the land and created life and significant geographic formations and sites. Aboriginal people tell Dreaming stories to pass on important knowledge, cultural values, belief systems and law to later generations. These stories are passed on through a number of different ways – Ceremonial body painting, song and dance being the most common. By maintaining a link with the Dreamtime and Dreaming stories of the past to the present, a rich cultural heritage is created. In many of the Dreaming stories, the Ancestral Spirits came to earth in...