Thus far in class we have studied many oral traditions from a variety of cultural backgrounds that date back thousands of years. However, we have yet to discuss the oral traditions of the indigenous people of the Aboriginal communities found in Australia. Aboriginal people are said to have one of the longest, continuous oral histories of any group of people on Earth, which started approximately 65,000 years ago (Crystal 2). For the aboriginal people, storytelling and other forms of oral traditions maintain integral parts of history, including records of cultural customs and ways of life. However, it is important to realize that oral traditions are not only an element of history; they are also a custom that is still widely practiced in Aboriginal Australia today.
             In order to understand the traditions of Aboriginal storytelling, one must first understand the often confusing but much revered concept of 'Dreamtime'. This concept is imperativel to the understanding of Aboriginal oral traditions because it is the subject of many stories that are still told today. When a storyteller speaks of the 'Dreamtime', he is referring to a portion of time in history which explains the origins and culture of the land and its people. This concept of 'Dreamtime' is very complex and contains many parts. For the Aboriginal people, it explains how the universe came to be, how human beings were created, and how the Creator intended for humans to function with the cosmos (Crystal 2).
             As the traditional stories of the Aboriginal people explain, 'Dreamtime' refers to some point in history in which ancestral spirits traveled across the barren and formless land. The exact date at which this occurred is unknown by any of the storytellers or Elders, but is referred to simply as 'that sacred time' (Burns 4). Numerous Aboriginal stories of the 'Dreamtime' accredit ancestral spirits w...