Geographic and Historic Dreaming

For the past several years, my family has been enthusiastically studying Australia, in particular Aboriginal culture which we find fascinating. The highlight of our study, reflecting back, was learning about songlines (sometimes called dreaming tracks.) We have spent endless hours out-of-doors, in ceremonies of our own making, practicing bushcraft and indigenous survivalism. We have clustered together round beautiful pieces of aboriginal art and told-stories (a most sacred occupation) from the billabong. We have learned to play the digeridoo, and practiced bush-medicine.

In aboriginal mythology, the creation story is called The Dreaming, and involves ancestral spirits roaming the earth and creating it's geography in detailed stories which are told, sung, and ritualized.
The one thing we have retained most from this study has been our responsibility to care for and interact with our natural environment, as stewards of the sacred spaces we have been given to live and love in.

Here, the text from a "Visit Aboriginal Australia" brochure, explains:

Aboriginal Australians have developed and are bound by highly complex belief systems that interconnect the land, spirituality, law, social life and care of the environment. The terms Dreamtime, Dreaming and Songlines are regularly used and interchanged to describe these important elements of Aboriginal cultures.

The Dreamtime is the period of creation when the world was a featureless void where ancestral spirits in human and other life forms emerged from the earth and the sky creating all living things and the landscape we see today.

All Aboriginal people have a common belief in the creation or Dreaming, which is a time when the ancestral beings traveled across the country creating the natural world and making laws and customs for Aboriginal people to live by. The Dreaming ancestors take the form of humans, animals or natural features in the landscape.

Creation beliefs and customary practices vary greatly across Australia, however they are all based on the journeys of ancestral beings and events which took place during the creation time.

"My people believe that our ancestors were responsible for the creation of our country and it was they who handed down to us our rules for living… We have ceremonies to look after the well-being and products of our land. These things penetrate our culture.
Dreamtime ancestors made the Songlines as part of the creation story – we still use these today."

Tiwi Elder, NTTC Experience Aboriginal Culture in Australia’s Northern Territory, 1997

Ceremony incorporating dance, art and song is an important part of both individual and family obligations to practice their culture.

Many of the Dreaming stories are presented as elaborate song cycles (Songlines) that relate to a specific place, group and individual.

They provide a map recording details of the landscape and express the relationship between the land, sea and the people.

The stories and Songlines encompass law, culture and spirituality to ensure the continuity of all things living.

"The ancestor is responsible for the law and country, a responsibility which is carried by the traditional owner of the song today. The owner of the song is responsible for the country and particular sacred places, and when the song travels over these sacred places it is sung by the traditional owner of song or country."

Bill Harney, Wardaman Elder, 2009

"Kaltjiti artist sing country, dance country and paint the song of their lands. The epic song cycles of the Western Desert peoples have resounded for thousands of years across these sand dunes of central Australia, echoed back from the orange rock faces of the granite hills and eddied around the deep blue rock holes where precious water hides from the scorching sun.
The creation ancestors first sang these songs at the dawn of time. These giant beings strode the land changing their shape from human to beast or plant, to water, earth or wind. The landscape still holds their resting forms in rounded hills, the fury of their flight was caught in twisted bloodwood trees and their flesh – know transformed – wraps the marble gums as dappled bark.
Songs sung down the generations have kept the land alive and spirit of her people strong."

Dr Diana James, Author, Painting the Song Kaltjiti artists of the sand dune country, 2009

"Today many Aboriginal communities are wanting to explain their heritage and show visitors around their country.
Firsthand knowledge gained in this way may help to understand Aboriginal Australia, as a living legacy of spiritual knowledge shared through rituals, dance, stories and journeys touching on aspects of the Dreamtime.

"Dr Irene Watson, Tanganekald & Meintangk woman, Lonely Planet Aboriginal Australia & Torres Strait Islands, Sydney, 2001

We custodians of this place are really happy for you to come and look around our country. Look around and learn so that you can know something about Aboriginal people and understand that Aboriginal culture is strong and really important.

Tony Tjamiwa, Uluru elder, NTTC Experience Aboriginal Culture in Australia’s Northern Territory, 1997

 So what does this have to do with us? While we don't believe the Dreamtime story exactly as told in most aboriginal communities, we have our own version, and we understand it's critical role in the salvation of the precious Aboriginal people, many of whom today have become very active Catholics in active Australian Catholic communities.

How can this be? The Catechism of the Catholic Church holds the answer, when it says:

“From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times  of their  existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God  and perhaps grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from each of us.”        Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 28 

Indeed, this has been the experience of those aboriginal people who have turned to Jesus:

Richard Campbell from the Gumbaingirr/Dhungutti people recalls the moment when he realised how close Christian and Aboriginal stories can be:

“A Catholic priest once asked me to connect Aboriginal spirituality with Bible stories through a painting.
“When I started to paint, I felt my own spirituality come flooding back and I started to remember the stories of my people. That’s when I became aware of the similarity between Aboriginal and Christian stories.
“We all have a spiritual connection…, we all belong to one big God—call it Christ, we call it Birrigun, we are all one in God.”

 You see, my children at this time in their young lives view history in terms of a four-part timeline:

The Dreamtime
The Back Then
The Nowtimes
The Time After This Day 

And in this way, by learning all of the intricate connections between the mythology of the aborigines, the ancient means of describing and learning geographic structures, the awakening sense of their own selves as dots on a lengthy timeline of the events of salvation history, and by placing before them a rich tapestry of beautiful ideas with which they can form relations, they learn geography and history -- even arts and music and science-- in a way that totally transcends the fact-based learning that so many people associate with those subjects. To me, this is the wisdom of Charlotte Mason's method in action, and what I love is that it has a unique twist that is -- from what I observe around me--- only happening in my family. Other families I know who faithfully use CM's ideas are learning geography in similar ways, and yet are making it "their own" in ways that directly speak to their own personalities and interests.

Charlotte Mason said this about outdoor time and natural philosophy:

"Of the teaching of Natural Philosophy, I will only remind the reader of what was said in an earlier chapter––that there is no part of a child's education more important than that he should lay, by his own observation, a wide basis of facts towards scientific knowledge in the future. He must live hours daily in the open air, and, as far as possible, in the country; must look and touch and listen; must be quick to note, consciously, every peculiarity of habit or structure, in beast, bird, or insect; the manner of growth and fructification of every plant. He must be accustomed to ask why––Why does the wind blow? Why does the river flow? Why is a leaf-bud sticky? And do not hurry to answer his questions for him; let him think his difficulties out so far as his small experience will carry him. Above all, when you come to the rescue, let it not be in the 'cut and dried' formula of some miserable little text-book; let him have all the insight available and you will find that on many scientific questions the child may be brought at once to the level of modern thought. Do not embarrass him with too much scientific nomenclature. If he discover for himself (helped, perhaps, by a leading question or two), by comparing an oyster and his cat, that some animals have backbones and some have not, it is less important that he should learn the terms vertebrate and invertebrate than that he should class the animals he meets with according to this difference.The method of this sort of instruction is shown in Evenings at Home, where 'Eyes and No-eyes' go for a walk. No-eyes come home bored; he has seen nothing, been interested in nothing: while Eyes is all agog to discuss a hundred things that have interested him. As I have already tried to point out, to get this sort of instruction for himself is simply the nature of a child: the business of the parent is to afford him abundant and varied opportunities, and to direct his observations, so that, knowing little of the principles of scientific classification, he is, unconsciously, furnishing himself with the materials for such classification. It is needless to repeat what has already been said on this subject; but, indeed, the future of the man or woman depends very largely on the store of real knowledge gathered, and the habits of intelligent observation acquired, by the child. "Think you," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, "that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of the geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million of years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered on scientific pursuits are blind to most of the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedgerows can assume." (Volume I)

Our time outdoors in geography, filled with tracking and observing and leaf-collecting and stone-overturning and pace-counting, record-keeping and timing and touching, squinting at and listening to.... this is time best spent for young people. This is what enables my children to walk down a busy suburban street and find three birds nests and a new kind of ant in the time it takes for another child joining us that day to say "I'm bored," or "I'm hot." This is what enables my three year old to step outside and gleefully exclaim: "A daddy cardinal!" and what enables my children to step outdoors, then turn around and come rushing back in to jump on me and exclaim: "The Cicadas!! We hear them!! They're finally here!!!" Whereas visiting children to our yard have often asked for toys, a trampoline or swimming pool to keep them entertained. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but just that it's marvelous to know that our children will be content and learning no matter their location.)

"All natural phenomena are orderly; they are governed by law; they are not magical. They are comprehended by someone; why not by the child himself?"

Further, Miss Mason had this to say about Geography:

Geography As commonly Taught.––Now, how is the subject commonly taught? The child learns the names of the capital cities of Europe, or of the rivers of England, or of the mountain-summits of Scotland, from some miserable text-book, with length in miles, and height in feet, and population, finding the names on his map or not, according as his teacher is more or less up to her work. Poor little fellow! the lesson is hard work to him; but as far as education goes––that is, the developing of power, the furnishing of the mind––he would be better employed in watching the progress of a fly across the window-pane. But, you will say, geography has a further use than this strictly educative one; everybody wants the sort of information which the geography lesson should afford. That is true, and is to be borne in mind in the schoolroom; the child's geography lesson should furnish just the sort of information which grown-up people care to possess. Now, do think how unreasonable we are in this matter; nothing will persuade us to read a book of travel unless it be interesting, graphic, with a spice of personal adventure. Even when we are going about with Murray in hand, we skip the dry facts and figures, and read the suggestive pictorial scraps; these are the sorts of things we like to know, and remember
with ease. But none of this pleasant padding for the poor child, if you please; do not let him have little pictorial sentences that he may dream over; facts and names and figures––these are the pabulum for him!
Geography should be Interesting.––But, you say, this sort of knowledge, though it may be a labour to the child to acquire it, is useful in after life. Not a bit of it; and for this reason––it has never been really received by the brain at all; has never got further than the floating nebulae of mere verbal memory of which I have already had occasion to speak. Most of us have gone through a good deal of drudgery in the way of 'geography' lessons, but how much do we remember? Just the pleasant bits we heard from travelled friends, about the Rhine, or Paris, or Venice, or bits from The Voyages of Captain Cook, or other pleasant tales of travel and adventure. We begin to see the lines we must go upon in teaching geography: for educative purposes, the child must learn such geography, and in such a way, that his mind shall thereby be stored with ideas, his imagination with images; for practical purposes he must learn such geography only as, the nature of his mind considered, he will be able to remember; in other words, he must learn what interests him. The educative and the practical run in one groove, and the geography lesson becomes the most charming occupation of the child's day. (Volume I)

She gives tips in Volume I for beginning geography lessons in this way:

1. Spending long hours out of doors noticing things.
2. Showing them rude sketch-maps of geographical information.
3. Telling them stories of travel and geography in a natural manner, as it comes up.



To round out this type of teaching, she recommends two things: Reading to the children to familiarize themselves with one geographical area and learning about and using maps.  I find it particularly fascinating that she insinuates in this next quote that a child can be "at home" in a geographical location utterly outside of his own sphere / realm in this manner.... it has certainly been our experience this past year that Australia has become a kind of "home" to us although we have never been there to visit and explore in person!

Give him next intimate knowledge, with the fullest details, of any country or region of the world, any county or district of his own country. It is not necessary that he should learn at this stage what is called the 'geography' of the countries of Europe, the continents of the world––mere strings of names for the most part: he may learn these, but it is tolerably certain that he will not remember them. But let him be at home in any single region; let him see, with the mind's eye, the people at their work and at their play, the flowers and fruits in their seasons, the beasts, each in its habitat; and let him see all sympathetically, that is, let him follow the adventures of a traveller; and he knows more, is better furnished with ideas, than if he had learnt all the names on all the maps. The 'way' of this kind of teaching is very simple and obvious; read to him, or read for him, that is, read bit by bit, and tell as you read, Hartwig's Tropical World, the same author's Polar World, Livingstone's missionary travels, Mrs. Bishop's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan––in fact, any interesting, well-written book of travel. It may be necessary to leave out a good deal, but every illustrative anecdote, every bit of description, is so much towards the child's education. Here, as elsewhere, the question is, not how many things does he know, but how much does he know about each thing.

and on maps:

Maps must be carefully used in this type of work,––a sketch-map following the traveller's progress, to be compared finally with a complete map of the region; and the teacher will exact a description of such and such a town, and such and such a district, marked on the map, by way of testing and confirming the child's exact knowledge. In this way, too, he gets intelligent notions of physical geography; in the course of his readings he falls in with a description of a volcano, a glacier, a cañon, a hurricane; he hears all about, and asks and learns the how and the why, of such phenomena at the moment when his interest is excited. In other words, he learns as his elders elect to learn for themselves, though they rarely allow the children to tread in paths so pleasant.

Then, again, geography should be learned chiefly from maps. Pictorial readings and talks introduce him to the subject, but so soon as his geography lessons become definite they are to be learned, in the first place, from the map. This is an important principle to bear in mind. The child who gets no ideas from considering the map, say of Italy or of Russia, has no knowledge of geography, however many facts about places he may be able to produce. Therefore he should begin this study by learning the meaning of a map and how to use it. He must learn to draw a plan of his schoolroom, etc., according to scale, go on to the plan of a field, consider how to make the plan of his town, and be carried gradually from the idea of a plan to that of a map; always beginning with the notion of an explorer who finds the land and measures it, and by means of sun and stars, is able to record just where it is on the earth's surface, east or west, north or south.
Now he will arrive at the meaning of the lines of latitude and longitude. He will learn how sea and land are shown on a map, how rivers and mountains are represented; and having learned his points of direction and the use of his compass, and knowing that maps are always made as if the beholder were
looking to the north, he will be able to tell a good deal about situation, direction, and the like, in very early days. The fundamental ideas of geography and the meaning of a map are subjects well fitted to form an attractive introduction to the study. Some of them should awaken the delightful interest which attaches in a child's mind to that which is wonderful, incomprehensible, while the map lessons should lead to mechanical efforts equally delightful. It is only when presented to the child for the first time in the form of stale knowledge and foregone conclusions that the facts taught in such lessons appear dry and repulsive to him. An effort should be made to treat the subject with the sort of sympathetic interest and freshness which attracts children to a new study.

In practical terms, this means: select living books about travel, become familiar in an "expert" sense with one or two locations, and then conduct quick but careful map drills in a natural way-- as the result of these stories being read.

History, she says, is "caught" much in a similar manner, and I'll write on that next, but I just wanted to share some of these ideas about Geography, time outdoors, and how they have related to our study of a particular culture.


Lest you think this sounds too complicated to format, organize and teach, I would remind you that Charlotte advocates a natural means of learning.
Our successful study of geography in this house has come not from memorizing place names and definitions of geographical features, nor even from intently studying Charlotte's thoughts on geography -- which I recommend doing, but which I just now discovered!--  but instead happened in this way:

We have an Australian uncle who is a famous scientist in the field of ants. We live in the Carolinas, and have a lot of ants, so we have contacted him a great deal just to answer questions about ants and geography. We watched the film "Australia" and it became an immediate family favorite, mostly because my husband and I have always been very interested in Australian culture. We began to play Aboriginal dress up games and watch more movies about the culture. I looked for a booklist and called my uncle, and began reading to them from aboriginal folk tales. My six year old decided she wanted to be an excellent tracker, so we deepened our tracking skills. We hiked quite a bit and became familiar with the landscape. We became aware of others' ability to track US, and started being more careful with how we moved through the woods. We sang songs and told stories, and read poems, about Australia. We looked at a map and my two year old shouted: "Australia!" and pointed.
We grew in our intimacy with the natural world around us. When we began to study ancient history, we compared and contrasted what we knew about traditional aboriginal culture with the developments of farming, settling, city-state building, etc. We interacted on facebook with my Australian friends and family and looked at pictures of the nature around them. We listened to stories of their visits to natural areas. We looked at maps and traveled them with our fingers. We wrote our own songlines for our Carolina woods. We watched youtube videos of Dreamtime stories and the kids acted them out. We developed a deep longing for the land of Australia and a desire to touch the sacred ground which we had studied. We began to hope we could move there, and to look for jobs we could do and ways we could get there. We realized we didn't have the money or ability for such a plan to be a real possibility, and became very sad. One day, driving over the bridge into Wilmington, our local beach community, our then-two year old exclaimed with great wonder and excitement: "Australia!!!" We realized, with awe and gratitude, seeing the land around us through her eyes, that the shape of the geographic formations around us, the way the entryway into the city was formed, and the big boats in the water reminded her of the opening scene of the movie Australia where we are introduced to the Darwin harbor. She was right!! The view outside our car windows was almost identical!
This brought me to reflect on the large red ant-hills we had seen and walked around in our woods. It also reminded me of the days I had, as a young child, walked hand-in-hand with my Australian uncle through the eucalyptus groves of my youth in Southern California, talking about snugglepot and cuddlepie and watching the Monarch butterflies migrate, dreaming of Kangaroos. Australia was a far-off island, yes, but also a eucalyptus grove in my backyard by the beach on Butterfly lane in Santa Barbara, CA, and a red dirt road in Fayetteville, NC. And a harbor in Wilmington, NC. I began to see Australia as a home in my heart, and less as the name of a place on a map I would never set foot in. And so do my children, now, as they make their own connections between the history of empire building and colonization, of the human roots we share hunting and gathering, of the geography they study in our secret woods, of the paths they have traced on a map, and of the God who has made them for heaven.

Reflecting on this idea a bit more, I can see how God has placed similar moments in my heart when I have reflected on "home." Well-traveled though I was growing up, I have not been so fortunate in my adult years. And yet I can "feel" the Provence of my youth in the thick heat of the Carolina summers, with the pine and sycamore scents bursting from the woods, and cicadas chirping away. Provence is a part of me when I make a mustard plaster for a coughing kid or whip up an aioli. I can see and feel the Swedish Christmas of my youth in the crunch of snow underfoot and the flickering candles and scent of apple cider bubbling away on the stove when we come in. I can feel Scotland in me rising up when we scramble from rock to rock through the wilderness, kilted and blue, ready for anything in games we play with the kids. This is our earth. And it is alive to us..... not because we have studied, so much as because we have made natural connections in our hearts and minds between maps, stories, saints, heroes, battles, love affairs, weather, herbs, miracles, heartbreaks and hillsides, mountains and rivers, rocks and  revolutions, laws and landscapes...

This is a living education.