Australia: Day Three: Shooting Spears

Day Two, we still couldn't go up to the Peninsula, so we went to Maria's Tribe's land and got taught how to make spears, throw them, make bread, and sat around and talked to Colin some more. The girls were not allowed to make the spears because of their culture, but the girls could still watch and could still throw them. While the boys learned how to make spears, the ladies learned how to make some bread. Colin talked to us about his culture and way of life. We talked about the afterlife, dream time, and their way of life. It was really bizarre for me to hear about their beliefs because their beliefs weren't normal to me. I was thinking that is probably how they feel about my culture and way of life and the European settler's culture and way of life that they were forced to practice. Their dreamtime is really interesting. They believe that when we sleep, the body is asleep, but the spirit(soul) is not. The spirit can travel back in time to our memories or can travel forward in time. It can visit a scene from the future whether that scene is good or bad. If you tell someone about it, that is how you make sure it won't come true. For instance, if you were to dream about a family member getting into a car accident, you would have to tell someone so that it wouldn't come true. They are heavily into intrepreting dreams. Colin talked about how there is a basic understanding of the rules and way of life through all of the Aboriginal tribes, but every tribe is different. They all speak different dialects, and abide by different rules. He described it as being like Europe. It is divieded by borders in which each country is different, with different rules and different languages. You have to get permission before entering another tribe, just like you need permission before entering another country. We talked about technology, and how much that we don't really need it. We can make a cell phone, but physically can never get ride of it. His people have been living on this land for 60,000 year without electronics and still have survived off of the land. Colin puts things in perspective that I would never have thought of before.