Rebecca Forst SOC 210 OL2
The Aborigines from Australia are one of the oldest surviving cultures in the world. Most of the Aboriginal people hold their creation stories as scared and they are passed down by story and song instead of being written. Some of the creation stories have been told to strangers and then taken out of rural Australia. The story of creation begins as with flat and barren plain land with no people, animals, trees, water, or birds. Their God, Baiame, who they call the “Maker of Many Things”, brought the Dreamtime people from under the ground. These Dreamtime people brought with them life to the land in form of people and animals, who are able to morph from one form to another. As the Dreamtime people traveled across Australia and they had adventures and battles. When they had the battles, plants would grow and the shape of the land changed. During their travels that would encounter a Rainbow snake that would eat them or drown them if they did something wrong and this is where the rivers and hills came from.
The essential part of the Aboriginal creation story is that it is a constant thing, morphing and changing the land, people and animals each day. The Dreamtime ancestors are still alive and watching the land and effecting both the people and the topography. When the Aborigine people die, if they are good, they can return to the Dreamtime state and have much power over the land. This allows the people to view every part of their land as sacred and it makes them value each part of their environment as alive and changing and an essential part of their existence.
Aboriginal creation story and Christianity have some similarities. They both believe that there is one God and that this God came upon a barren land with no living things upon it. While the Aboriginal people believe that they have Dreamland people who are still alive and changing our environment, Christians believe that god created people in the...