Jukurrpa

In the Aboriginal Australian worldview that the Warlpiri call Jukurrpa and English speakers the Dreaming, the land was made and inhabited by ancestral beings, often of heroic size or with supernatural powers. Every place and creature takes its meaning from its origin in the Dreaming, and places such as Uluru hold special potency. The Dreaming is not a distant past but a continuing reality, which the anthropologist William Stanner called everywhen.

A person may own a Dreaming of their country, such as the kangaroo or honey ant, and through it their ancestry runs as one unbroken cycle from which all knowledge comes. The English word Dreamtime renders an Arrernte word that some scholars think is closer to eternal or uncreated.