Walkabout
A walkabout (from English walk “to go” and about “around”) describes the wandering of an Australian Aboriginal on his traditional songlines (dream paths). In a narrower sense, the walkabout is an introductory ritual for thirteen-year-old Aborigines ( initiation ) who are going their own dream path for the first time.
According to the portrayal of the British writer Bruce Chatwin (1940–1989) in his novel Traumpfade , the Aborigines are basically concerned with a walkabout to experience the correspondence between their dream path song and the path they have hiked. The aim is to experience the correspondence between the reality of nature and the image that the song tells.
For those Aborigines who live as nomads or semi-nomads , this wandering along the songlines they know is their normal way of life. For Aborigines who are settling down , the walkabout is an activity in which they can preserve their identity by resuming and passing on the ritual that the ancestors always lived.
Changes in nature mean a loss of home for traditional Aborigines , insofar as the entire dream path is “home” for them. The attachment to home is particularly intense at the sacred sites of a dream path and goes beyond what is associated with feelings of home in the western world .
See also
- Walkabout (feature film by Nicolas Roeg, Australia 1971)
Individual evidence
- ↑ On the initiation of the Aborigines see also Baldwin Spencer , Francis James Gillen : Initiation Ceremonies. In: The same: The Native Tribes of Central Australia. Dover, London 1969, pp. 212-270: Chapter 7 (reprinted from the original 1899 edition; online at sacred-texts.com).