“This Is Good Country. We Are Good Dreamers”

Abstract

In Australian Aboriginal studies, much emphasis has been placed on the Dreaming (or Dreamtime) as a cosmological order or Ancestral Law—in other words, as an all-encompassing field having a hierarchically superior value. Yet, as a field of anthropological investigation, the cultural systems of dreams in Australian Aboriginal societies, in terms of their epistemological and ontological principles and the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of dreams and dreaming, have somehow remained neglected. Indeed, we know very little about the representations and the enactment of dreams in terms of local dream theories, modes of dream sharing, or dream interpretations.¹ These are some of the gaps that this chapter will begin to fill in, with a particular focus on Western Desert societies. I will, at first, share a few thoughts about what I consider some of the difficulties inherent in promoting an anthropological approach to dreams and dreaming. This approach is concerned with achieving a fuller understanding of the social and cultural dimensions of dreams, and of the complexity and diversity of cultural systems of dreams.