what is the purpose of australian aboriginal songlines course hero

“ In Aboriginal mythology, a songline is a myth based around localised ‘creator-beings’ during the Dreaming, the indigenous Australian embodiment of the creation of the Earth. Each songline explains the route followed by the creator-being during the course of the myth. The path of each creator-being is marked in sung lyrics.

Full Answer

What is the purpose of Australian Aboriginal Songlines?

Songlines trace the journeys of ancestral spirits as they created the land, animals and lore. Integral to Aboriginal spirituality, songlines are deeply tied to the Australian landscape and provide important knowledge, cultural values and wisdom to Indigenous people.

What are Songlines in Aboriginal art?

Songlines are one of the many aspects of Aboriginal culture that artists draw on for inspiration. They are the long Creation story lines that cross the country and put all geographical and sacred sites into place in Aboriginal culture.

How do Songlines connect culture and people?

Songlines also act as a 'Cultural Passport' when travelling through the country of another Mob. The verses that relate to a particular region, can be sung in the local language so that the people living there know that travellers are passing through in a respectful manner.

How old are Aboriginal Songlines?

Songlines have been a central feature of First Nations cultures for over 80,000 years. Songlines carry Law and stories that First Nations people live by.

Where are the songlines in Australia?

Songlines is located on the land of the Larrakia people, Traditional Owners of the Darwin region.

What is our songlines?

What is a Songline? A Songline represents a verbal story that supersedes time or place but navigates one through land, lore and position within Indigenous Australia society. We chose 'Our Songlines' to be our name as we are inviting you into our culture and into our story.

Why is the Australian Indigenous culture so important to maintain?

As Australians, we can all be proud to be the home of one of the oldest continuous civilisations on Earth, extending back over 65,000 years. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's strong connection to family, land, language, and culture forms the foundation for social, economic, and individual wellbeing.

Why is music storytelling and dancing important to the Aboriginal culture?

Music and dance are important to Aboriginal culture. They are used as part of everyday life and to mark special occasions. Songlines tell stories of the Creation and Dreamtime as Aboriginals made their journeys across the desert, while other sacred music is used in ceremonies.

What is the significance of the Rainbow Serpent in Aboriginal mythology?

As a protector of water, the Rainbow Serpent also controls water, so he has the power over life and death in the desert. In Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory the Rainbow Serpent is associated with rituals of abundance and propagation in the natural world, and of fertility and well-being in human society.

What do aboriginals call funerals?

You may hear Aboriginal people use the phrase 'sorry business'. This term refers to the funeral and mourning rituals around the death of a member of the community.

What are songlines kids?

Songlines are maps of the land Aboriginal people live on. People sing as they walk, about the country they are passing through and the stories and their relationship to it. They are connected to Dreaming Stories and to the stories told in dot paintings.

Where is the songlines exhibition now?

Open now at the Museum of Sydney, Walking Through a Songline is a spectacular digital art installation with deep cultural connections.

Why do Aboriginal paintings use dots?

Dots were used to in-fill designs. Dots were also useful to obscure certain information and associations that lay underneath the dotting. At this time, the Aboriginal artists were negotiating what aspects of stories were secret or sacred, and what aspect were in the public domain.

What are songlines kids?

Songlines are maps of the land Aboriginal people live on. People sing as they walk, about the country they are passing through and the stories and their relationship to it. They are connected to Dreaming Stories and to the stories told in dot paintings.

What are the seven sisters in Indigenous culture?

The Seven Sisters are ancestral beings, they were sky people who descended on the earth and were then pursued by a group of men. For the men it had been the first time they ever laid eyes on women and they were taken by desire. The women had managed to escape by beating them with their digging sticks.

What do aboriginals call funerals?

You may hear Aboriginal people use the phrase 'sorry business'. This term refers to the funeral and mourning rituals around the death of a member of the community.

Why did Aboriginal people use star maps?

Aboriginal Australians used star maps like this to help navigate their way across the continent. Maps by Robert S. Fuller, “ Star Maps and Travelling to Ceremonies—the Euahlayi People and Their Use of the Night Sky “.

What is the Aboriginal star map?

Aboriginal Australian star maps are a part of songlines, a fascinating, complex method of navigation. “ In Aboriginal mythology, a songline is a myth based around localised ‘creator-beings’ during the Dreaming, the indigenous Australian embodiment of the creation of the Earth.

Did Aboriginal people map Australia's road network?

There’s a good chance Aboriginal people mapped out Australia’s road network thousands of years before Europeans arrived—and used star charts to do it. (Phys.org)

Why are songlines important?

The Significance of Songlines. Songlines underpin the whole Aboriginal culture. This is because the significant knowledge of culture that belongs to people comes from their participation in the songlines of their country. Those same stories are the family stories and the clan stories that become part of what people can paint when they start ...

What is sacred story in Aboriginal culture?

In Aboriginal culture these ancestral sacred stories are passed on as large song cycles. People might specialise in chapters or sections of a songline which tells the entire creation story that relates to a particular tract of land. People on neighbouring land will have the next chapters of what happened to the ancestors as they crossed over to their own part of the country.

How Is A Songline Represented In A Painting?

A songline going across traditional country may have twenty or may have fifty very important sites for a language group to maintain and to carry out the appropriate cultural protocols. Painters will often relate to the specific story that their family is custodian for. There is also an inherited skin name kinship structure that decides how things get passed down intergenerationally. A particular skin group along with a senior individual may be custodian for a particular site. The site sits on a songline which has a much wider spread of importance as it connections up with all the other groups who have responsibility along that songline for other sites. All of these are tied together with one ancestor story and one common narrative, the creation narrative.

What is the repetitive patterning of the songline?

The repetitive patterning was really the songline overlay that sits on top of the natural terrain of the country. Aboriginal people see the country through the songlines and the ancestral importance of that country as much as seeing hills and valleys and plains. Traditional Aboriginal people see a physical landscape but all the significance in that landscape comes from what the ancestors did and then handed down to the people through the songline ceremonies.

What is songline art?

By: David Wroth, Japingka Gallery, 2015. Songlines are one of the many aspects of Aboriginal culture that artists draw on for inspiration. They are the long Creation story lines that cross the country and put all geographical and sacred sites into place in Aboriginal culture. For Aboriginal contemporary artists they are both inspiration ...

What is the meaning of the songline "criss cross"?

Many of these songlines criss-cross in the sense that they go east and west and they go north and south and they go diagonally and they backtrack according to the journeys of the ancestors. They create a kind of cultural network of stories that ties all of Aboriginal Australia together.

How are songlines mapped?

Songlines can be mapped. It requires major consultation between neighbouring groups because there were several hundred language groups across Australia when white people first arrived here. Those language groups mostly define custodianship of songlines. Many of these songlines criss-cross in the sense that they go east and west and they go north and south and they go diagonally and they backtrack according to the journeys of the ancestors. They create a kind of cultural network of stories that ties all of Aboriginal Australia together.

What is a songline in Australia?

A songline is based around the creator beings and their formation of the lands and waters during the Dreaming (creation of earth). It explains the landmarks, rock formations, watering holes, rivers, trees, sky and seas.

Why are songlines important?

Songlines are central to the existence of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and are imperative to the preservation of the world’s oldest living culture and its practices.

What does Kulba Yadail teach us?

Missi explains, ‘ Kulba Yadail teaches us to read the stars, the moon and the sea. Kulba Yadail describes our environment, our culture and also our identity. In our culture, the stories and other knowledge of our world have always been handed down orally from generation to generation since time immemorial. It is this knowledge that provides guidance. From the boys’ perspective, it is their uncles, fathers and sometimes grandfathers who teach them this knowledge. The relationship between the stars and the seasons determines when we can cultivate, hunt and harvest the food from the sea and land.’

What is the symbolism of the Kaygas?

The Kaygas is on top of a shark mask that is also connected to the Zugubaw Baydham (shark star constellation). The masks aligned on top along the centre of the Kaygas represent spiritual Mawa dancers performing a sacred ritual only for the eyes of the elders.

What are songlines in Australia?

For an Elder in Central Australia for example, Songlines are part of life and second nature. Songlines trace astronomy and geographical elements from ancient stories, and describe how these things have helped shape the landscape as it is now. They were first used by First Nations people as a form of communication across the continent and a way ...

Why are songlines important to First Nations?

S onglines carry laws and stories that First Nations people live by. Because Songlines are so interwoven with First Nations cultures, it is difficult to translate what they are for non-Indigenous people. For an Elder in Central Australia for example, Songlines are part of life and second nature.

What is the name of the spirit that drives the Seven Sisters east across the land and into the night sky?

As the Seven Sisters leave Roeburn, they are pursued by an evil shape-shifting spirit called Wati Nyiru or Yurlu, who drives the sisters east across the land and into the night sky - where they become the Pleiades star cluster.

What is the songline of the Seven Sisters?

The Songlines of the Seven Sisters are some of the most significant and comprehensive creation tracks that cross Australia. The story of the Seven Sisters story is one of magic and desire, hot pursuit and escape, and the strength and power of family ties.

How many deserts does the songline cross?

The songline crosses three deserts in an epic story that is also one of the oldest ever told in this country. Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters was an exhibition that showed this story. It can now be explored from this website.

Where did the songlines originate?

Many of the routes shared through Songlines, are now modern highways and roads across Australia. The famous route across the Nullarbor between Perth and Adelaide came from Songlines, as did the highway between the Kimberleys and Darwin.

Who used songlines?

They were first used by First Nations people as a form of communication across the continent and a way of mapping Country. In his quarterly essay A Rightful Place, Noel Pearson compares Songlines to The Odyssey, The Iliad, and the Book of Genesis. He refers to Songlines as Australia's very own Book of Genesis.

Why did the Aboriginals use songs?

Aboriginals often had to move through land for various purposes including trade, ceremony, and to migrate to allow regeneration of flora and fauna at camp sites. Songlines act as maps for these journeys, containing information about the land and how the traveller should respectfully make their trip – basically the sort of information that you need to know to survive. This practical knowledge has been handed down generation after generation though songs as to be much more memorable than just listing facts.

What is the Aboriginal Ar T?

Aboriginal ar t, from caves to cliffs and wood to textiles, is also an extraordinary powerful mnemic device. Fundamentally, it represents Country, providing a map of the land. But it is more than just this: it is also a system of intellectual knowledge that makes reference to the way the landscape is to be understood in terms of the stories and teachings of the ancestors. Aboriginal curator Djon Mundine writes in Saltwater: Yirrkala Bark Paintings of Sea Country:

What is the songline of a journey?

These journeys across the country are recorded and marked as Songlines, also referred to as ‘Dreaming Pathways’ . Songlines have unique ancestral stories attached to them as they each mark the route of localised creator-beings and the establishment of specific landmarks and sacred sites. Clan groups are in turn tied to the creation history of their birthplace and have custodial obligations to that place.

How do songs help in memorisation?

The vital element in memorisation is the way in which Songlines call up Country. Brains work to recall information and retrieve memories when given some sort of cue, often in physical space s. By associating knowledge with locations in Country, Aboriginal people have these cues permanently in place. The way in which Songlines are mapped into a sequence of distinctive locations, each separated from the other, is the optimum set of cues

Why is music important to memory?

Research also shows clearly that music causes an emotional response and that being emotionally engaged makes any information much more memorable.

How do indigenous peoples use their knowledge?

Indigenous cultures can be referred to as ‘oral’ in that they activate archived knowledge orally through performance rather than recording it in writing. They are therefore dependent on their memory for everything they know. By drawing on a range of alternatives to literacy, they ensure that the encyclopedia of knowledge they have built up over tens of thousands of years is maintained and constantly updated.

Where does the song cycle go?

Another song cycle goes from Port Augusta to Arnhem Land, and there are others that come from the Western Australian coast all the way to Central Australia.

What is the significance of Aboriginal songlines?

Aboriginal identity often links to their language groups and traditional country of their ancestors. Songlines not only map routes across the continent and pass on culture, but also express connectedness to country. Songlines are often passed down in families, passing on important knowledge and cultural values.

Why do Aboriginal people sing songs?

Aboriginal people regard all land as sacred, and the songs must be continually sung to keep the land "alive". Their " connection to country " describes a strong and complex relationship with the land of their ancestors, or " mob ". Aboriginal identity often links to their language groups and traditional country of their ancestors.

Why are songlines important?

Since a songline can span the lands of several different language groups, different parts of the song are said to be in those different languages. Languages are not a barrier because the melodic contour of the song describes the nature of the land over which the song passes. The rhythm is what is crucial to understanding the song. Listening to the song of the land is the same as walking on this songline and observing the land. Songlines have been described as a "cultural passport" which, when sung in the language of a particular region and mob, show respect to the people of that country.

Why is singing important in Mardudjara?

Songlines Singing is an essential element in most Mardudjara ritual performances because the songline follows in most cases the direction of travel of the beings concerned and highlights cryptically their notable as well as mundane activities. Most songs, then, have a geographical as well as mythical referent, so by learning the songline men become familiar with literally thousands of sites even though they have never visited them; all become part of their cognitive map of the desert world.

How did Aboriginal people travel?

By singing the songs in the appropriate sequence, Aboriginal people could navigate vast distances, often travelling through the deserts of Australia's interior. The continent of Australia contains an extensive system of songlines, some of which are of a few kilometres, whilst others traverse hundreds of kilometres through lands of many different Aboriginal peoples — peoples who may speak markedly different languages and have different cultural traditions. One songline marks a 3,500-kilometre (2,200 mi) route connecting the Central Desert Region with the east coast, to the place now called Byron Bay. Desert peoples travelled to the ocean to observe fishing practices, and coastal people travelled inland to sacred sites such as Uluru and Kata Tjuta.

What is a dreaming songline?

A songline, also called dreaming track, is one of the paths across the land (or sometimes the sky) within the animist belief system of The First Nations People of Australia, which mark the route followed by localised "creator-beings" during the Dreaming.

What is a songline called?

A songline has been called a "dreaming track", as it marks a route across the land or sky followed by one of the creator-beings or ancestors in the Dreaming.