ated belief systems historically having the effect of promoting sustainable use of the environment.
             Aboriginal law was established during the dreaming or creation time, ancestral beings walked the earth, creating the landscape and all living species. The Dreaming brought order by subjecting all entities to a common law. The land is both a topographical record of the journeys of the ancestral beings and a physical manifestation of the truth of the moral system.
             According to this law humans were not ambiguously placed in the landscape they had responsibilities to look after their country; in return, the country would look after them, providing food, water and other necessities. Land is not only identification with the past; it also holds the promise of the future
             The ancestors gave people, languages, sites – wells, hills or riverbeds containing ancestral beings, their own songs, dances and design icons; which were all in themselves parts of the essence of the creation entities.
             This shared creation established a bond between humans and non-human organisms, best described as totemism. For example Macropus rufus was no ordinary marsupial to members of the Krantji Kangaroo clan who can trace their spiritual lineage to this totemic figure. No place was more sacred to the Red Kangaroo clan than a single, small natural spring known as Krantji. This spring was the everlasting home of the original ancestor of the clan. To the Aranda, Krantji spring was sacred because it was the aperture through which the red Kangaroo chief made his first appearance on earth. It was also sacred because his presence continued to animate this place, in ways that challenge the imagination and that permeate the natural world. Aranda Dreamtime tales of ancestor kangaroo travels show a sophisticated grasp of ecology; mapping the creation time stories reveals precision maps of the kangaroos preferred habitats. (Suzuki)
             There was no hunting nea...