Though greatly ashamed of what he had done, Julunggul was even more ashamed of his evasions. In his embarrassment he raised his body high into the clouds until only the tip of his tail remained in the water hole. "I have done wrong," he admitted. "I ate the Wagilag sisters and their babies."Aboriginal Australian mythology is fascinating because it came to maturity in isolation. No one knows what legends the original emigrants from Asia to Australia were like, but the myths of Australia represent a splitting off.
Aboriginal Australian art is also fascinating. People have long described it as "primitive", but in its geometric stylization, it seems more like it's modern ahead of its time.
Time Before Morning is a book compiling these myths by Louis A. Allen. Allen isn't an anthropologist or social scientist in general. His biography, in fact, describes him as a management consultant. And there are some awkward passages in this book. He basically starts the book by saying, "So the Aborigines aren't all naked cannibals. Who knew?!?"
But more important is that he's out there trying to learn. Allen's got real enthusiasms, especially for Australia and its ecosystems.
2 comments:
I see Allen wrote this book in 1976 when Aboriginal art wasn't accepted at all, not even by the Aboriginies themselves. It sounds as if he made a very important contribution to art and indiginous history in making such an enormous effort to collect the stories.
Although I haven't read it again since buying it at Powell's long ago I still have Robert Lawlor's Voices of the First Day - Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime. A quote on the back cover by a Tribal elder says:
"They say we have been here for 60,000 years, but it is much longer. We have been here since the timebefore time began. We have come directly out of the Dreamtime of the great Creative Ancestors. We have lived and kept the earth as it was on the First Day. All other peoples of the world come from us."
Theirs really is an amazing history and the landscape is daunting to say the least Not long ago we watched Walkabout again and Rabbit Proof Fence as well. Both of them featured David Gulpilil, an Aboriginal actor.
ps: Forgot to mention the appropriate nature of the title.
Post a Comment