Aboriginal Dreaming treats creation as an ongoing present act, not a past event.

Evidence

And here is what makes the Dreaming unique among the world’s creations: it is not finished and gone, locked in the past. The Dreaming is ALWAYS PRESENT — the creative power of the Ancestors still lives in the land, and people can touch it, renew it, and keep the world going through ceremony, through song, and through walking the ‘songlines’ — the paths the Ancestors traveled, which are also songs, so that to walk the land singing the right song is to travel the Ancestor’s creative journey and keep the world alive. … Set the Dreaming beside every other creation, and it offers perhaps the most profound vision of all: that creation is not a one-time event in the distant past but an ETERNAL, PRESENT reality, woven into every feature of the living land, which the people must actively help to sustain — so that, for the world’s oldest living culture, to sing the songs and walk the land and keep the ceremonies is, quite literally, to keep the world being created, every day, forever. — , A Year of World Stories, 15488

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the core meaning of the Dreaming and songlines for readers.
• XREF: Connects to other philosophies of cyclical or ongoing creation versus linear Genesis-style cosmogony. — connects to: Colonized subjects’ dream imagery is literal social fact, not Oedipal symbol.; Culture is a process of creating and transforming reality, not an environment. — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 323; Tradition is about how elements are articulated, not about persistence of old forms — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1017

Broader Connections

• Culture is a process of creating and transforming reality, not an environment. #expands (0.70) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 323
• Tradition is about how elements are articulated, not about persistence of old forms #expands (0.65) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1017