Jukurrpa

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The word "Jukurrpa" is a Warlpiri word. The Warlpiri language is spoken by the Warlpiri Aboriginal people of the Australian Northern Territory.

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The term Jukurrpa is a term that may be applied to individual ancestral beings, or to any manifestation of their power and nature, i.e. knowledge of their travels and activities, rituals, designs, songs, places, ceremonies. 

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This provides the model for human and non-human activity, social behaviour, natural development.

Jukurrpa is not conceived in being located in an historical past but as an eternal process which involves the maintenance of these life-forces, symbolised as men and as other natural species. 

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"when people say "Jukurrpa" ("Dreamtime", the Dreaming"), they think like this:

at some time before, many things were happening here for some time, things like this can't happen now

when people here want to say something about all these things, they can say it with one word,

this word is Jukurrpa..."

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The words 'Dreaming', and these days to a lesser extent 'Dreamtime', are ubiquitous, manifest in the work of Indigenous songwriters, in the genre of texts offered as explanations for Aboriginal art, and in the millions of words generated in the processes of reclaiming tradition land or establishing Native Title to it.

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Footnote: Jukurrpa has very complex meanings and hard to summerise in a few paragraphs.

We have tried to summerise as best we can from a quite detailed explanations on findings from Cliff Goddard from Griffith University, Brisbane and Anna Wierzbicka from the Australian National University, Canberra.       

If you would like to read further here is the article: 

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