Aboriginal Song and Dance Lecture

The most interesting aspect of the Aboriginals that Yimdumduma described was the idea that all the tribes of Australia are put on the earth in order to serve as earthly costodians. The Aboriginals use Walkabouts to reconnect themselves to the landscape and its creators. The world is sending signals to us all the time and every action that a Bushman does is focused toward the

memory of the creators.
The Frog Lady is creator of the earth, Rainbow the snake is creator of the oceans and Big Boss is creator of the skies. Frog Lady first created the lands then married Rainbow after he created the oceans. Rainbow left to govern the oceans and Big Boss then married Frog Lady also. (This polygamist attitude is still accepted in the Bushman tribes.) Rainbow grew angry and flooded the oceans until the Lightening People, with the help of the white and black falcons, killed Rainbow and the flood waters receded. When the creation was finished the ancestors transformed into the landscape itself; jumping into rock to form pictographs, turning into plants and animals and even humans like us.
Yimdumduma sang these stories beautifully. He told us that every creature and action has its own song. He sang songs for the kangaroo, lizard (boy's dance), and crane (girl's dance). The songs are sacred but also a way to create great joy within the people.
Even such a peaceful, spiritual and happy people have a tremendously difficult past. When Europeans colonized Australia, they took sacred aboriginal land and looked down on the natives. The Europeans said that Aboriginals were the lowest and least intellectual of all the tribes in the world. As time moved forward, they were seen as less inferior and more like antiques needing restoration. In the 1960's there was what was known as the Lost Generation, in which the government took the Bushman children away from their families due to assumed inadequate rearing. The government has only recently apologized for this dark time in history. The Aboriginals are still continually fighting to defend and maintain their sacred culture.