Songline

A songline, also called a dreaming track, is a path across the land or sky in the beliefs of Aboriginal people in Australia. These paths show the path taken by special "creator-beings" during the Dreaming, which is a sacred time when the world was made. The paths are remembered through songs, stories, dances, and art. These are important for ceremonies.

The Dreaming is a sacred story about how the world was created and connects Aboriginal people to their past. Ancestors traveled across the land long ago and made special places. Animals and land were created during the Dreaming. Songlines link these places and the stories of creation. People learn these songs and have duties to their home places. The songs help with ceremonies in the special places along the songlines.^[1]

A songline is called a dreaming track because it follows the path of a creator-being or ancestor in the Dreaming.^[2][3] People who know the songs well can find their way by singing them. The songs describe landmarks like waterholes and other natural features. Sometimes, marks on the land, like big footprints, show where the creator-beings traveled.

By singing the songs in the right order, Aboriginal people can travel long distances, even through deserts. Australia has many songlines, some short and some very long, crossing lands of many different Aboriginal groups who speak different languages. One songline is about 3,500 kilometers long, connecting the desert to the east coast at Byron Bay. Desert people traveled to the coast to learn fishing, and coastal people traveled inland to sacred sites like Uluru.^[4]

Because songlines cross many language areas, parts of the songs are in different languages. This is not a problem because the tune and rhythm of the song describe the land. Listening to the song is like walking the path and seeing the land. Songlines are like a "cultural passport" that shows respect to the people of the land when sung in their language.^[4]

Groups of Aboriginal people are connected because songlines cross the whole country. All groups share beliefs about ancestors and laws. People from different groups meet and interact through their songlines.

Some songlines have a set direction, and walking the wrong way can be disrespectful. Aboriginal people see all land as sacred, and singing the songs keeps the land alive. Their strong connection to their land, or "country," is very important.^[5] Their identity is linked to their language and traditional land. Songlines not only show routes and culture but also express their connection to the land..^[6] Songlines not only map routes across the continent and pass on culture, but also express connectedness to country.^[7]

Songlines are passed down in families, sharing important knowledge and values.^[3]

The Dreaming Spirits also gave life to unborn children and set rules for society, creating tribal laws and totems.^[8]

Anthropologist Robert Tonkinson wrote about Mardu songlines in his 1978 book The Mardudjara Aborigines - Living The Dream In Australia's Desert.

Singing songlines is very important in Mardudjara rituals. The songline usually follows the path of the beings in the stories and tells about their important and everyday actions. The songs talk about places and myths, so by learning the songline, men learn about thousands of places even if they have never been there. These places become part of their mental map of the desert.^[9]

In his 1987 book The Songlines, British writer Bruce Chatwin described songlines as a maze of invisible paths all over Australia, called 'Dreaming-tracks' or 'Songlines' by Europeans, and known as the 'Footprints of the Ancestors' or the 'Way of the Lore' by Aboriginal people." Aboriginal Creation stories tell about a special totemic being who traveled across the land in the Dreamtime, singing the names of everything they saw - birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes - and by singing, they made the world come to life.^[10]

Margo Ngawa Neale, a senior Indigenous art and history expert at the National Museum of Australia, says that songlines can be seen as paths of knowledge crossing the whole continent, sky, and water. They connect important places and hold stories, called story places, which are part of the natural land features. These places, made by ancestral beings, are like libraries that keep important knowledge for survival. The stories teach about how to behave, relationships between men and women, and where to find water or food.^[11]

• The Yolngu people from Arnhem Land tell the story^[12] of Barnumbirr, a creator-being linked to the planet Venus. Barnumbirr came from the island of Baralku in the East, guided the first people to Australia, and flew across the land from East to West, naming and creating animals, plants, and natural features.
• The Yarralin people honor the spirit Walujapi, the Dreaming Spirit of the black-headed python. Walujapi is said to have made a snake-like path on a cliff and left a mark of her buttocks when she sat down. Both marks can still be seen today.
• The Native Cat Dreaming Spirits started their journey at the sea and moved north into the Simpson Desert, traveling through lands of many groups like the Aranda, Kaititja, Ngalia, Kukatja and Unmatjera. Each group sings the part of the Native Cat Dreaming that belongs to their land and shares a relationship of respect.
• In the Sydney area, because the soft sandstone makes valleys end in cliffs, it was easier to travel along ridges. So, songlines often follow ridges, where much sacred art like the Sydney Rock Engravings is found. In other parts of Australia, songlines often follow valleys where water is easier to find.
• Songlines are also connected to Aboriginal art sites in Wollemi National Park in New South Wales.^[13]

• "Why Songlines Are Important In Aboriginal Art". Japingka Aboriginal Art Gallery. 18 February 2020.