The following handout is offered as a supplement to reading assignment and lectures of April 2-4.
Myths are sacred stories about past events or about events in the future.
Ritual is a repetitive social practice composed of sequence of activities that are set off from social routines of everyday life or that are connected to a specific set of ideas encoded in myth. It is shared by all Aboriginal groups in Australia. The Warlpiri term Jukurrpa is often translated as Dreaming or Dreamtime. Jukurrpa is composed of myths or sacred stories, which are themselves composed of segments. Jukurrpa refers to an Ancestral Present during which the world was shaped by the emergence of Ancestral Beings and social and moral orders were instituted.