From Dreaming Ancestors to Human Ancestors? Post‐Classical Indigenous Beliefs about Human Ancestral Spirits and Human Ancestral Remains

ABSTRACT This paper reports on the remarkable resonances of ‘classical’ beliefs about Dreaming beings in ‘post‐classical’ beliefs about the spirits of the human ancestors and the remains of human ancestors. It provides an account of such ‘post‐classical’ beliefs derived from native title claim research in various jurisdictions, involving groups with relatively long and disruptive contact histories. Three kinds of contemporary beliefs and their context are described: (1) beliefs about the persistence of the spirits of human ancestors in their traditional country; (2) beliefs about the spiritual power of human remains; and (3) beliefs about the sacredness of traces of the activity of distant human ancestors. These ideas of continuing presence echo older ideas about Dreaming beings from the foundational epoch leaving powerful traces or spiritual essences in the landscape. In a similar way, contemporary beliefs about the spiritual power of human remains found in the landscape or repatriated from museum collections echo older ideas about the traces left by Dreaming beings and the mysterious powers of certain parts of the corpse. Together with the accumulation of knowledge about the sites of ancient Indigenous activity in the landscape, the discovery of human remains may provide a pathway to re‐sacralising (or re‐inscribing) the landscape. If this is correct, it complicates the characterisation of the historical transformation of Indigenous relations to land as one of secularisation. It also raises perennial questions about the viability of using such resonances as continuity arguments in native title claims.