The Gaagudju Dream Time - Jonas Miller 02/18

While watching the documentary-style film on the Gaagudju shown in class, the notion of a Dream Time really sparked my interest. The equivalence of the Dream Time and what we'd consider to be the "mythos" of the people is clear; I am more interested in the linguistics of the term and how that relates to the people's cultural history. The standard definition of dreaming is a unifying human experience where the mind explores to its own curiosities during sleep, often to be forgotten soon after rising from slumber. There are a couple of possible explanations as to how this phenomenon translates into the religion of the Gaagudju. On one hand, to describe a period of history as the Dream Time is to suggest that it is not sharp in the people's memory, but rather a hazy reflection of what was. This implies that there was a rigid period of time that has since passed where the events of the Dream Time took place. The caveat of this theory is that there had to have been a moment when the Dream Time was recent history, fresh in the mind of those who may have even witnessed it. I do not think such a rigid explanation suits the meaning of the Dream Time in the Gaagudju culture.

I believe a more accurate description of the Dream Time would quite literally be the time of dreams, not necessarily a rigid point in Gaagudju history. As oral legends were passed from generation to generation, there had to be a time during the creation of the land and its inhabitants where the mythology actually took place. The feeling of losing the details of one's dream after waking up is familiar amongst people, implying the use of "dream" in Dream Time almost acts as a descriptive word. The term implies that the happenings of Dream Time are not exactly clear, though the overarching themes and storylines remain consistent throughout retellings. Rather than describing a specific moment in time, I believe the Dream Time describes a period in the Gaagudju history where the creatures of their surroundings sculpted their world, setting the natural patterns in stone. 

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