Desert dreamers: with the Warlpiri people of Australia

Description

In the heart of Australia, on the cracked red earth, among wild vegetation, weathered bush, and dried-up creeks, hundreds of invisible pathways exist that become entangled on the earth's surface, underground, and in the sky, clouds, and wind. The Aboriginal people call them Jukurrpa: “the Dreamings.” This web is the Warlpiri land. Practicing the Dreaming, by ritual art, is for the Warlpiri a way to reactivate ancestral traditions to connect with the cosmos and respond to current social and political issues. In 1979, anthropologist Barbara Glowczewski embarked on a journey to study the Warlpiri in the Australian outback. Struggling at once to maintain their traditions and cultural heritage as well as adapting to the continuing secularization and techno-progress of their European Australian counterparts, she takes us into the landscape, artistic rituals, and turmoil of the Warlpiri over three decades. Becoming accepted among Aboriginal families as a translator, and at the same time a negotiator of two vastly different visions of the earth, contemporary Western culture and the ancient indigenous dreaming culture, Glowczewski created a singular document of ethnological fieldwork and of self-transformation and discovery. Cover Title Page Copyright Table of Contents Future Dreaming Prelude Part One (1988) A Warlpiri Family Lajamanu Yapa and Kardiya Royalties Nostalgia Part Two (1979) What is your Skin? The Businesswomen Kajirri Totems and Taboos The Truck In Search of the Dreaming Part Three (1979 – 1983) The Film Everything Collapses The Trial Reunion The Warlpiri in Paris Part Four (1984) A House for Women Possum and the Men The Revelation The Voice of the Nights Stories of Spirit-Children Part Five (1984) The Black Dog The Shield Ceremony Shamans A Ritual Convoy Part Six (1988) Changes Is God a Dream(ing)? The Hypercube How to Say Afterwards Postface to Pocket Edition, Actes Sud (1996) Annex (2013) We Have a Dreaming: How to Translate Totemic Existential Territories through Digital Tools