https://japingkaaboriginalart.com/aboriginal-dreamtime-stories/
Why Are Dreamtime Stories Important in Aboriginal Culture?
Dreamtime is a word that has been in language use for just over 120 years. In the English language it is now well embedded and well understood to represent something about beliefs in Aboriginal culture.
Perhaps it is an inadequate word because it tries to address a complex system of ideas that varies between different Aboriginal communities, and is very hard to express in an English word.
To some extent the idea of Spirit in Country along with the Laws that go with that Country, and the connections with the people who are born into that Country, are all reflected in the concept of Dreamtime. It may be that over the decades we have come to use it most commonly to mean the Creation stories from Aboriginal Australia. However it remains a term that we reach for when we see the powerful essence expressed in some of the significant Aboriginal paintings that we view in museums and art galleries.
It is a deeply complex term that carries a deep meaning for Aboriginal people, and this needs to be duly recognised in the wider Australian community.
The Dreamtime is a term that describes unique stories and beliefs owned and held by different Australian Aboriginal groups. The history of the Dreamtime word and its meanings says something about the development of the ideas held about the Aboriginal world, and how they are expressed through art.
Jukurrpa is one traditional term used by several groups of Central Desert languages to describe what could possibly be seen as the religion and the Laws of the people, and in some ways a description of Reality.
In that sense, traditional Aboriginal people believe that the world was created by Ancestor Beings. The spirit of the Ancestor Beings remains in the country, in the animals and the places and the people of that country as an ongoing presence.