"Aboriginal people learned from their stories that a society must not be human-centred but rather land centred, otherwise they forget their source and purpose...they are interconnected with the rest of creation, that they as individuals are only temporal in time, and past and future generations must be included in their perception of their purpose in life."
"People come and go but the Land, and stories about the Land, stay. This is a wisdom that takes lifetimes of listening, observing and experiencing...There is a deep understanding of human nature and the environment...sites hold 'feelings' which cannot be described in physical terms...subtle feelings that resonate through the bodies of these people.. It is only when talking and being with these people that these 'feelings' can truly be appreciated. This is.. the reality of these people.."
In 1926 a British anthropologist, Professor Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, noted many Aboriginal groups across Australia shared versions of a single myth. The myth told of a powerful, creative, dangerous snake or serpent, usually of enormous size. This serpent was linked with rainbows, rain, rivers, and deep waterholes.
Radcliffe-Brown used the words "Rainbow Serpent" to describe this common, recurring myth. He listed the different names used across Australia for this "Rainbow Serpent":
This 'Rainbow Serpent', a snake of enormous size, lives in the deepest waterholes. It came from a larger being which can be seen as a dark streak in the Milky Way. It shows itself to people in this world as a rainbow as it moves through water and rain, shaping landscapes, naming and singing of places, swallowing and sometimes drowning people; strengthening the knowledgeable with rainmaking and healing powers; blighting others with sores, weakness, illness, and death.
Even Australia's 'Bunyip' was identified as a 'Rainbow Serpent' myth of the above kind. The words used by Radcliffe-Brown are now commonly used by government agencies, museums, art galleries, Aboriginal organisations and the media to refer to Australian Aboriginal myth specifically, and as a shorthand term for Australian Aboriginal mythology generally.
Another myth found across Australia is about a person who arrives from the sea. This person, usually from England, either offers gifts or brings great harm. The person is most often called 'Captain Cook', and portrayed as a villain.
The Aboriginal myths about 'Captain Cook' are not oral history. They are not part of James Cook's exploration of the east coast of Australia in 1770. Aboriginal people did meet with Cook, especially during his seven-week stay on the Endeavour River. The Guugu Yimidhirr people may remember these meetings.
The Australia wide Captain Cook myth, however, tells of a symbolic British character who arrives from across the oceans sometime after the Aboriginal world was formed and the original social order founded. This Captain Cook signals dramatic changes in the social order, into which present-day Aborigines have been born.
In 1988 Australian anthropologist Kenneth Maddock examined several versions of this 'Captain Cook' myth as recorded from a number of Aboriginal groups around Australia:
"set up the people [cattle industry] to go down the countryside and shoot people down, just like animal, they left them lying there for the hawks and crows...So a lot of old people and young people were struck by the head with the end of a gun and left there. They wanted to get the people wiped out because Europeans in Queensland had to run their stock: horses and cattle."
The Murrinh-Patha people live in the saltwater country inland from the town of Wadeye. They describe a Dreamtime in their myths which anthropologists believe is a religious belief but different from most of the world's other religious beliefs.
The Murrinh-patha have a oneness of thought, belief, and expression without equal in Christianity. They see all parts of their lives, thoughts and culture as being influenced by their Dreaming. They do not see a difference between spiritual or material things. There is no difference between things that are sacred and things that are not. All life is 'sacred', all conduct has 'moral' results. All life's meaning comes out of this eternal, everpresent Dreaming.
"The sacred is everywhere within the physical landscape. Myths and mythic tracks cross over.. thousands of miles, and every particular form and feature of the terrain has a well-developed 'story' behind it."
This Murrinh-patha mythology is based on a view of life that believes life is "...a joyous thing with maggots at its centre.". Life is good and caring, but during life's journey, there are many painful sufferings that each person must come to understand and live through as he grows. This is the message being told within the Murrinh-patha myths. It is this philosophy that gives Murrinh-patha people reason and meaning in life.
The following Murrinh-patha myth, for example, is performed in Murrinh-patha ceremonies to initiate young men into adulthood.
"A woman, "Mutjinga" (the 'Old Woman'), was in charge of young children, but instead of watching out for them during their parents' absence, she swallowed them and tried to escape as a giant snake. The people followed her, spearing her and removing the undigested children from the body."
Within the myth and in its performance, young children must first be swallowed by an ancestral being who changes into a giant snake. The children are then vomited up before being accepted as young adults with all the rights and benefits of young adults.
The Pintupi peoples from Australia's Gibson Desert region have a mostly 'mythic' form of understanding their identity, All events happen and are explained by the social structures and rules told of, sung about, and performed within their superhuman mythology. That is, the structures of society come from the myths, not from their own political actions, decisions or influences of local individuals.
"The Dreaming.. provides a moral authority lying outside the individual will and outside human creation.. although the Dreaming as an ordering of the cosmos is presumably a product of historical events, such an origin is denied."
"Current action is not understood as the result of human alliances, creations, and choices, but is seen as imposed by an embracing, cosmic order."
Within this Pintupi view of the world, three long geographical tracks of named places control and guide society. They are interrelated strings of important places named and created by mythic characters on their way through the Pintupi desert region during the Dreaming. It is a complex mythology of stories, songs and ceremonies known to the Pintupi as "Tingarri". It is most completely told and performed by Pintupi peoples at larger gatherings within Pintupi country.
Steve Bisciotti
Steve Bisciotti (born April 10, 1960 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) is a Baltimore businessman. In 2004, he became the majority owner of the Baltimore Ravens. He bought the team in 2004 from previous owner Art Modell. He owns a business that works with technology and computers.
34th G8 summit
The 34th G8 summit was a meeting in 2008 for the leaders of Canada, the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
This meeting of the Group of Eight (G8) was the 34th meeting in a series which began in 1976. The G8 and the summit are part of a "consultative process and not an international organization".
The meeting took place in Japan at on the northern island of Hokkaidō. The international group of leaders met from July 7–9, 2008.
The participants were the "core members" of the group:
A small others were invited to join some of the discussions.
The G8 plus the five other nations were known as G8+5.
Leaders of some organizations were invited to be part of some of the discussions.
Carol Banawa