A “Corroboree” of Literature

Chapter 2 A “Corroboree” of Literature

‘Ceremony is the commemoration of the actions of creation. The act of identifying as part of these totemic ancestors releases a surge of life force … The ceremonial ground, bora, becomes the creation place itself, filled with the life force of the totemic ancestors.’ victoria grieves (2009, 32) ∵

This chapter outlines the literature, located after yarning with the seventeen participants who shared their oral knowledges of Christianity and The Dream- ing. My participants expressed their desire to speak with me before I engaged the library books. This was largely because, as Aboriginal scholar Lester Irabi- nna-Rigney (2006, 109) emphasizes, the overwhelming majority of Australian literary and cultural production to date is dominant culture, or Western. For this reason, amplifying the oral knowledges of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Is- lander peoples is necessary. However, the discourses resist such inclusion in various ways. Accordingly, this chapter traces the contours of the existing literary landscape, while recognizing it is as incomplete. Written sources are highly important for the academy.1 For my participants, however, these books and ar- ticles were conceived as dancers joining an oral tradition that had existed for thousands of years. Within pre-colonial spirituality, enchanted imprints of the ancestral figures remained in the earth and could be sung alive. Aboriginal knowledges emerged out of the land and its features, and this tradition continues today. Much Ab- original knowledge was learned, remembered, and adapted through ceremony that took place at a bora circle. Aboriginal scholar Vicki Grieves (2009, 8) explains that the English term “Dreaming,” used in reference to Pan-Aboriginal “Spirituality,” is a “gloss” of many diverse local spiritualties. The British Settlers

1 The Australian Literature Society named its journal Corroboree in (1921). This suggests there has been a long correlation between written and oral literature. Margaret Clunies Ross notes that the Settlers likened ceremony to European theatre (1986, 232). However, this has not yet afforded Aboriginal knowledges (particularly those communicated orally) equal respect.

44 Chapter 2 derived the word “corroboree” from the Dharug word “carib-berie” in order to talk about Dreaming ceremonies (Clunies Ross 1986, 232). Pastor Sandra explained that on Bundjalung land twenty dialects were spoken, but the word for “dance” in the Yugambeh dialect is “ngari.” Perhaps because of this lingual di- versity, my participants used the Anglicized word “corroborree” to explain these concepts to me, which suggested they had reclaimed it. A corroboree, they explained, represented a dialogue between all the dancers present – from this and all other worlds. Similarly, Chester Schultz explains Dreaming in this way,

[Dreaming] is the old time out of ordinary time, during which the ancestral beings traveled and shaped amorphous materials into the definitive forms of the world – physical, ecological, social and moral. Thus, it is the absolute norm for life today. Its power remains available in the natural features of the earth in which the ancestral beings now live. In breen 1989, 8

Born from it, each dancer also eventually returns into the Dreaming’s nascent, creative formlessness on death. The contours of tradition were (and are) held in the dance itself, with its proceedings impacting law, economics, and social life. Thus, Deborah Rose describes Dreaming as “a poetic key to reality” (1992, 44). She states,

The distinction is uneven … in the sense that Dreaming penetrates all kinds of life, coexisting with ordinary. Ned Kelly, Captain Cook and Eng- land were all there. It makes sense to speak of a temporal disjunction because things have changed. But it is equally important to remember that Dreaming is a quality of life and is therefore not temporally constrained. rose 1992, 205

In other words, in its performance The Dreaming was simultaneously ancient and capable of radical change. In contrast, for the Settler society, a wholly alien Australian landscape re- inforced the severity of convict sentences of transportation for life (Madley 2008). Colonists perpetuated notions of the “otherness” or “strangeness” of “The Great Southland” (Holden and Holden 2001, 51), and continued to reference Britain as their real physical and spiritual “home” (Banner 2005). They were fearful as Kookaburras (a native form of kingfisher) laughed maniacally from trees and when silent dark figures traversed the land. But they were most terrified during the ceremonies, which were loud, raucous events that could last for three days at a time. These (along with Aboriginal languages) were