Biographies of the Dreaming

Abstract

What are the implications for the craft of biography in Australia of the recognition that people have been here for 2,500 generations? This chapter explores the potential for writing biographies of people who lived before 1788. Drawing on archaeology, ethnography, and discourses on the Dreaming, we investigate how much we can know about individuals in the pre-documentary and deep past. We also ask what it means to write biographies of mythical and non-human beings. Many of the dynamics of Western history and biography are muted in Aboriginal cultures where different cosmologies and philosophies prevail. Dreaming figures, we suggest, are an essential dimension of telling Aboriginal life stories across deep time. But is it possible, even respectful, to apply the craft of biography to the Dreaming?. Show more