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Concept
Songline
Summary
A songline, also called dreaming track, is one of the paths across the land (or sometimes the sky) within the animist belief systems of the Aboriginal cultures of Australia which mark the route followed by localised "creator-beings" in the Dreaming. The paths of the songlines are recorded in traditional song cycles, stories, dance, and art, and are often the basis of ceremonies. They are a vital part of Aboriginal culture, connecting people to their land.
The Dreaming, or the Dreamtime, has been described as "a sacred narrative of Creation that is seen as a continuous process that links traditional Aboriginal people to their origins". Ancestors are believed to play a large role in the establishment of sacred sites as they traversed the continent long ago. Animals were created in the Dreaming, and also played a part in creation of the lands and heavenly bodies. Songlines connect places and Creation events, and the ceremonies associated with those places. Oral history about places and the journeys are carried in song cycles, and each Aboriginal person has obligations to their birthplace. The songs become the basis of the ceremonies that are enacted in those specific places along the songlines.
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.
A knowledgeable person is able to navigate across the land by repeating the words of the song, which describe the location of landmarks, waterholes, and other natural phenomena. In some cases, the paths of the creator-beings are said to be evident from their marks, or petrosomatoglyphs, on the land, such as large depressions in the land which are said to be their footprints.
By singing the songs in the appropriate sequence, Aboriginal people could navigate vast distances, often travelling through the deserts of Australia's interior.
Official source
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Related concepts (4)
Australian Aboriginal culture
Australian Aboriginal culture includes a number of practices and ceremonies centered on a belief in the Dreamtime and other mythology. Reverence and respect for the land and oral traditions are emphasised. Over 300 languages and other groupings have developed a wide range of individual cultures. Due the colonization of Australia under terra nullius concept these cultures were treated as one monoculture. Australian Aboriginal art has existed for thousands of years and ranges from ancient rock art to modern watercolour landscapes.
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in areas within the Australian continent before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples of the Australian mainland and Tasmania, and the Torres Strait Islander peoples from the seas between Queensland and Papua New Guinea.
Aboriginal Australians
Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, but excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. The term "Indigenous Australians" is applied to Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders collectively. People first migrated to Australia at least 65,000 years ago and formed as many as 500 language-based groups. They have a broadly shared, complex genetic history, but only in the last 200 years were they defined as, and started to self-identify as, a single group.