This society or group is associated with totem shares with a mystical connection. These people believed they are like their totem and that the totem gave birth to their ancestors in a mythical time. This association between people and their totem is to have strong aboriginal people to believe that their health is linked to their totem’s wellbeing. They carry on periodic rituals to ensure the welfare of the totem. This society believes that the ancestors deposited spirits of living beings on earth during the dreamtime creation.
For example Churingas are sacred drawings on wood or stone. Durkheim argued that Totemism represents religion in its most elementary form. The totem has divine properties which separates it from other profane objects. It is a symbol for the group, tribe or clan itself as it stands up for the values central to the community which everyone respects. Therefore worship of the totem is the worship of the social group itself.
Australian Aboriginal activist Pat Dodson states “we belong to the land; our birth does not sever the cord of life which comes from the land- our spirituality, our culture and social life depend on it” (cited in Ellwood, 1988). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people believe to have a spiritual connection to their land whether it is to the plants or animals or persons. Grieves (2008, p. 369) described a “mutual spirit being” which refers to this special spiritual relationship between the people and their
Animals were strong symbols in the Olmec religion. They practiced the animistic religion of shamanism, the belief that all things, whether animate or imamate, had an animal spirit. Mayas believed that every aspect of nature was controlled by a separate god. They even believed that each day had its own god. 1 Because of this, Mayas strived to live a life that would follow the cycles of the universe, in conjunction with the cycles of time.
Durkheim studied Australian aborigine’s sacred symbols. Theirs being a totem pole. This symbol could represent beliefs, norms and values which are made clear by the engravings in the totem pole, as they are usually important gods
They made Totem poles thinking they were religious carvings. Story telling was very important to their culture. They often told stories about legends and fairy
The concept of a sacred space or area reserved for a particular deity or purpose was fundamental, as was the corollary theory that such designated areas could correspond to each other. Heaven reflected Earth, and macrocosm echoed microcosm. The celestial dome was divided into 16 compartments inhabited by the various divinities: major gods to the east, astral and terrestrial divine beings to the south, infernal and inauspicious beings to the west, and the most powerful and mysterious gods of destiny to the north. The deities manifested themselves by means of natural phenomena, principally by lightning. They also revealed themselves in the microcosm of the liver of animals (typical is a bronze model of a sheep's liver found near Piacenza, bearing the incised names of divinities in its 16 outside divisions and in its internal
Navajo mythology is enormously rich and poetically expressive. According to basic cosmological belief, all of existence is divided between the Holy People (supernaturals) and the Earth Surface People. The Holy People passed through a succession of underworlds, each of which was destroyed by a flood, until they arrived in the present world. Here they created First Man and First Woman, the ancestors of all the Earth Surface People. The Holy People gave to the Earth Surface People all the practical and ritual knowledge necessary for their survival in this world and then moved away to dwell in other
The law is also a way of thinking, behaving and being; therefore, it is considered to be an integral part of the development and civilisation of societies, communities and cultures. (Lecture). In the traditional Aboriginal culture, the law revolves around principles of behaviour, in particular respect for all things in the universe e.g. plants, animals, air and water (lecture). The traditional Aboriginal law never changes; it is a body of rules which does not differentiate between the spiritual and physical worlds.
In the Maori world everything has Whakapapa. To define whakapapa, its like stories of creation giving us some senses of beginnings it also associates with layers upon layering (Barlow, 1991). Within the Maori society Whakapapa expressed about the identity were a person is from. It identifies you’re ancestral connections that have been passed down from your generation, it includes knowing who you are and identifying your culture values according to Smith (2011). Whakapapa in the Maori world is linked to genealogies of “rituals and stories” (Smith, 2011, p. 3).