Jim Regan - Site Reviews
Stories of the Dreaming
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Every culture has its stories. The ancient Greeks told of the various escapades of Zeus and company. The Romans, in history's best known example of cultural plagiarism, changed the Greek names but kept the Greek plots. The Irish had Finn MacCumhail, the Norse, Odin and the British, Arthur. The tales of Western -- and Eastern -- cultures have been well-documented through the centuries, and are available to anyone with an interest.
Unfortunately, the stories of many, if not most, aboriginal cultures are either lost or in danger of extinction, and in an effort to preserve and share this window on indigenous society, the Australian Museum and the Australian Cultural Network has created Stories of the Dreaming -- a collection of indigenous cultural tales from south-eastern Australia.
Opening with a title page that automatically takes the visitor to the site's index, Stories of the Dreaming first offers some background information about the culture of Australian aboriginal storytelling. Brief articles look at the role that storytelling plays in indigenous society, the meanings of "Dreaming" and "Dreamtime", the sacred -- and secret -- nature of some stories, and the concept of Custodianship. A glossary also provides quick translations, organized by the story in which they appear, for those of us who don't know their Woomera with their Boondie.
The chief reason for the site, the Stories Link, opens an index of a dozen tales, ranging from the Creation, (always a good place to start) to warnings about greed and other vices, to the origins of the boomerang. Five of the stories are also accompanied by 'Explanation' pages, which grant a deeper understanding of the tale and its significance. (The Explanation page for The Two Wise Men And the Seven Sisters, also demonstrates how the stories were told, and points out that the caves which housed the Seven Sisters have since been destroyed by mining.) Finally, there are links to two of the story's Custodians explaining, "Why the stories are told".
In presenting the tales, Stories of the Dreaming also illustrates a site's unsuccessful attempt at universality. Each story is available in text, RealAudio and high- and low-quality RealVideo versions. So far so good. Unfortunately, the AV files are of the most recent, Windows-only, 'G2' variety - so even with a connection fast enough for video feed, Mac users are limited to audio. (A G2 beta exists for the Mac, but it is 'problematic' and requires at least a 200MHz processor.) Meanwhile, the Web authors are "looking at other streaming formats" to fill the gap.
Of course, this is no reason to avoid the site. Most of us don't have a fast enough connection for smooth streaming video anyway, and, as with last week's site, the chance to hear a tale told by a master -- its Custodian, no less -- is more than worth the trip. (Mind you, if there were a downloadable format such as QuickTime, we'd all be able to watch the gestures and see the locations as well.)
Read one of these stories, then listen to it, and you'll appreciate the value of the Oral Tradition, as well as how much is lost when a tale is reduced to text. Yet there's no escaping that countless stories have been lost forever simply because they were never written down, and though recordings have been made of master storytellers in the last century, they sit almost exclusively on museum and university shelves. Sites like Stories of the Dreaming (I hope there will be more) allow anyone with a modem to view the record and experience the wonder.
Stories of the Dreaming can be found at http://www.dreamtime.net.au/.
Jim Regan provides 'Today's Links' to the e-Monitor. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.