# Return of the Dreamtime

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-20 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Pym Trueman, Return of the Dreamtime, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Return of the Dreamtime
> 
> Pym Trueman
> published in The Family: Our Hopes and Challenges
> 
> Roseberry: Association for Bahá'í Studies Australia, 1995
> 
> While I was in Samoa I attended a few meetings of the Natura group,
> which was more or less the equivalent of our Environment movement here. They met once a
> month to hear talks on the environment, health, culture (particularly Samoan culture), and
> other topics that were of interest to the group. Most of the people who attended the
> meetings were 'palagis' (a term used to refer to any people of European origin).
> 
> One meeting was addressed by Dr. Tunumafono who is the Editor of the
> newspaper, Savalii. Dr. Tunumafono is a well-educated man with a degree from a University
> in New Zealand. He has also travelled abroad for a United Nations project. The title of
> his talk was "The Effect of the Missionaries on Samoan culture".
> 
> He began his talk by reading two pieces of poetry he had written in
> which he regretted the loss of freedom for his people and looked longingly at the
> uninhibited naturalness of the actions of a small child who could run naked and urinate on
> the tyres of the cars that are a symbol of the civilization that had restricted his
> freedom.
> 
> Then he read from an article that he had written called "Who is
> naked now?" This was a very perceptive look at how, when the missionaries came, his
> people were required to cover their nakedness. They were told it was sinful for women to
> bare their breasts and for people to bathe in the nude. So what had been a very natural
> sexual act at the right time in life, became a hidden secret which men were curious to
> explore. Thus unnatural attitudes to sex developed. What had been 'natural'
> became 'sinful'. Then he looked at what is happening in European countries
> today, with people wearing bikinis, topless waitresses and nudist camps and beaches for
> nude bathing. He asked the question, "Who is naked now?"
> 
> While listening to his talk I was struck by the parallels of what
> happened to the Aboriginal people of Australia and what happened to the Samoan people as a
> result of the coming of the Christian Missionaries with their Victorian ideas of
> civilization and moral ethics.
> 
> I cannot profess to be an authority on the Samoan culture as it is so
> complex that it would be difficult for anyone who was not born into it to claim to have a
> full understanding of its customs and traditions. Likewise, my knowledge of the Aboriginal
> culture is limited to what I have gained from having friends in the Aboriginal community
> and reading some of the vast range of literature now available on this subject. However, I
> feel that the common experience of their contact with the Christian missionaries is a bond
> between these two peoples.
> 
> Christianity was readily accepted in Samoa because of a promise that
> was given to Malietoa Tavita. There is a legend in Samoa of a Goddess, Nafanua. Nafanua
> features in Samoan mythology from the time of Queen Salamasina somewhere in the 16th
> century and was also around just prior to the arrival of John Williams who brought
> Christianity to Samoa in 1830. The tradition tells that four high chiefs went to Nafanua
> to receive a kingdom from her. To three of the chiefs she gave areas of land for them to
> rule over but when Malietoa Tavita came to her she said to him,
> 
> Alas, all the kingdoms are gone. I have no more to give you. But wait, you will receive a kingdom from heaven and you will be its ruler.
> 
> When John Williams came to spread the word of the Heavenly Kingdom of
> God, Malietoa Tavita felt this was the fulfillment of that promise. He readily accepted
> the message and encouraged the missionaries to spread their teachings.
> 
> Similarly, according to information given in the video documentary "Blackout Spirituality", the Aboriginal people were expecting to receive some
> kind of guidance, and when the white man came, they thought that this was what they were
> waiting for and they stretched out their hand to him. But he did not help them. He used
> them, persecuted them and stole their children from them.
> 
> Because the Samoans were the majority race in Samoa and because of
> their strong, traditional social structure, Christianity was largely grafted on to that
> structure and many of the cultural patterns have been woven into the fabric of the
> churches.
> 
> The early missionaries learnt the Samoan language and translated the
> Bible into Samoan. They then sent Samoan men overseas to be trained as priests and pastors
> and later, set up a Theological training school in Samoa. Today most of the church leaders
> are Samoan priests or pastors and they have become influential through the Village
> Councils.
> 
> These developments are completely opposite to what happened in
> Australia where the tribal law and social structure was so closely linked with the
> environment of the country that the white invaders could not recognize a
> 'civilization' that was not existing in terms of settlement, buildings and
> farming. The nomadic ways of the Aboriginal people labelled them as savages, little better
> than animals, and indeed some early settlers saw them as vermin and pests who stole their
> sheep and cattle and they hunted them down like animals.
> 
> When one reads the stories of the conflicts between the early settlers,
> who had the law on their side, and the Aboriginal people, one can understand that the
> events of those days are as hard for the Aboriginal people to forgive as it is for the
> Australian prisoners of war who worked on the Changi Railway to forgive the Japanese, or
> for the Jews to forgive the Germans for the years of the Holocaust.
> 
> But there are many parallels between what effect the Missionaries had
> on the Aboriginal people and the Samoan population. One of the devastating effects of
> white people coming to both countries was the introduction of diseases for which they had
> no immunity and which wiped out hundreds of Samoans and Aboriginals.
> 
> In both Samoan villages and Aboriginal tribes, with the coming of the
> missionaries, children were separated from their parents, although this was done in a more
> humane way in Samoa than in Australia, where police and welfare workers just grabbed
> children from the Aboriginal camps and put them in institutions run by various religious
> denominations. They were put there to learn the 'white man's ways' for
> 'their own good'. They were to learn to read and write and to become useful
> servants for the white people. This meant that besides their school work, the children
> were made to do all the cleaning and household work of the missions. They lost their
> language and their culture.
> 
> This was a very traumatic time for both the children and their parents
> and many Aboriginal people today still bear the scars of the bitter memories of that time.
> Many are still trying to establish their tribe of origin and their parentage.
> 
> In Samoa the children were taken to the home of the Pastor to be
> educated and to learn Christian ways. This meant they were still within their own village,
> but the separation from the parents denied them the learning of the oral traditions of
> their culture. It seems that the evening was the time when the family would lay on their
> mats and the children would learn all the stories and traditions from their parents and
> grandparents. When one understands the complexity of the Samoan social structure and the
> strictness with which these customs are observed, together with the oral history that has
> been preserved down the centuries, one can realise the amount of training that must have
> taken place for the custom ways of the people to be carried on down through the
> generations.
> 
> Some churches, particularly the Methodist Church, regarded singing
> (other than hymns) and dancing as sinful and, in the case of the Aboriginal corroborees, a
> heathen ritual to be discouraged. This was a disaster for the Aboriginal people as it was
> through their corroborees that their laws and dreamtime were taught and preserved.
> Similarly, for the Samoan people, much of their history was preserved through the
> ceremonies that they observed. Song and dance came naturally to them as an expression of
> their culture and identity, with the love of music and rhythmical movements.
> 
> Although the white people didn't recognise the Aboriginal social
> structure, there are great similarities between the Aboriginal Tribal Community and the
> Samoan village life. Both have the family as a base unit of the community and this is
> expanded to the extended family, which, in Samoa is a village and in Australia, is a
> tribe.
> 
> Eric Fromm wrote a book called To Have or To Be in which he
> put forward the theory that there are basically two philosophies that govern the way
> people relate to each other, and he labelled these 'To Have' and 'To
> Be'. The people who live by the 'To Have' philosophy are those who place
> more importance on material possessions than on other people. They have a clear
> understanding of what is theirs and what belongs to other people. They feel they have an
> exclusive right to what is theirs.
> 
> The 'To Be' people are those who put human relationships
> before material possessions. Whatever one person has, is to be shared with the family or
> tribe. In fact, there are strict rules in both Samoan and Aboriginal tradition for the way
> the kill of a pig or kangaroo is to be shared out with the family or tribe. In Samoa,
> money that is earned is to be given to the family Mata'i or chief who then shares it
> out to the family according to their needs.
> 
> Because the Aboriginal people were nomads who had to change camp
> according to where the food and waterholes were at any particular time of the year, the
> only possessions of value to them were their hunting weapons and their corroboree
> artifacts, like the didgeridoo and clapping sticks. They had no problem in sharing these
> and all food caught or gathered was shared. There was no his or hers, mine or thine, and
> in fact, their very existence depended on the unity of the tribe.
> 
> In Samoa there was little that could be claimed as personal property. A
> family would live in a fale but it was their responsibility to share it with other family
> members or guests who wanted to visit and there seems to have been no limitation to the
> length of the stay. Food was harvested and shared cooperatively.
> 
> In the same way Aboriginal families, when they acquire a house, will
> put up family and friends for weeks at a time, until they get the urge to move on. If they
> own a car and someone in the family or tribe wants to borrow it, there is no way they can
> refuse him.
> 
> The Samoan community differs from the Aboriginal in that the Samoan
> Chiefs are acquisitive of titles; most of the wars in Samoa were not over ownership of
> land but for titles over land that gave power to the owner. The orators also were into
> building up their own status through the acquisition of fine mats that were the items
> representing wealth in that society. In fact, the rulers in ancient Samoa were often
> induced to divorce their wife to take on another for the sake of the fine mats and gifts
> that would come to the orator from that transaction. Samoans became Chiefs by reason of
> their hereditary right to a title within a family, while Aboriginals became elders
> according to their knowledge of the Dreamtime and spiritual laws. The Samoan village today
> is governed by a Council of Chiefs or Mata'is, while the Aboriginal tribes have a
> Council of Elders.
> 
> The Aboriginal people have their Dreamtime to explain the creation of
> the world and there are gods and totems in their spirit world that are not unlike the
> creatures in the Samoan myths and legends. This is particularly so in the ability of
> animals to take on human qualities and the way that humans can be transformed into animals
> and birds and even to rocks.
> 
> Both the Aboriginal Dreamtime and the Samoan mythology were threatened
> with extinction with the coming of the Christian Missionaries. Such stories had no place
> in the story of creation as given in the Bible, so they were to be rejected and best
> forgotten. A whole generation of children were deprived of this rich heritage that is
> comparable to the myths and legends of Greece and Rome in European countries or the Sagas
> of the Nordic people.
> 
> The recognition of One God is now firmly rooted in Samoa which strongly
> identifies itself as a 'Christian country'. The growing atheism of the Western
> world, as result of disenchantment with religious practices today, has not attacked their
> faith, but there is still some belief in evil spirits that can take possession of a
> person. This belief is said to account for some of the intellectually or physically
> disabled children and influences the community attitudes towards them.
> 
> In Samoa there is an ancient belief in Nifoloa, a long toothed aitu
> (spirit) who can appear in many forms. If he bites someone, no puncture mark is seen but
> the victim suffers a great deal. Unless a certain Samoan medicine is applied immediately,
> the person will die. Anyone who displeases the aitu can fall victim to him.
> 
> Similarly, there are Aboriginal people who can 'point the
> bone' to cause a person to become ill and die, and medical science has yet to come up
> with an antidote for this fatal malady.
> 
> Probably because there were so many dialects of language for the
> Aboriginal tribes, the missionaries gave no recognition to their language and insisted
> they learn to speak and write English, so the language of many tribes has been
> irretrievably lost. They were only oral languages and were never recorded.
> 
> Today there are big changes in the attitude of the Christian Churches.
> The Pope, when on an Australian tour that took him to the Northern Territory to meet the
> Aboriginal people, expressed regret at the past misguided policies of the early Christian
> missionaries and encouraged the Aboriginal people to incorporate some of their own
> cultural practices into their church services. At least one church allows an Aboriginal
> elder to carry out an Aboriginal purification ceremony in the church. But there are no
> Aboriginal bishops yet.
> 
> David Lewis, in his book From Maui to Cook refers to the
> publication of a book Worship in the Pacific Way which came out of the
> Pacific Conference of Churches in 1974 and quotes some random examples of Island
> traditions being introduced into the Christian Churches. He refers to this as
> 'Fa'a Pasifica' which is the term being used by many people for the changes
> occurring in the churches in the Pacific region. Some of the changes he cites are:
> 
> A Chimbu priest saying mass in traditional regalia.
> 
> A whale's tooth being presented to a bishop at his consecration.
> 
> A New Caledonian minister administering communion with coconut water instead of wine.
> 
> I have been told that in some Communion Services, fine mats (which were
> traditionally used when seeking forgiveness) are now being used in the service of Samoan
> churches.
> 
> One of the most tangible evidences of this changing respect for
> traditional beliefs is the official recognition of sacred sites. A major milestone in this
> development occurred when the Australian Government gave Ayers Rock (now known by the
> Aboriginal name of Uluru) back to the Aboriginal people to be administered by them in
> cooperation with the Parks and Wildlife Department. Many other sacred sites have since
> been claimed and set aside as reserves.
> 
> It is unfortunate, or perhaps inevitable, that the Christian Churches
> have splintered into so many sects. It is certainly a drain on the resources of the
> village people in Samoa when they have to maintain as many as three or four different
> churches and priests or pastors in one village. These different churches seem to be
> prepared to live side by side but are resistant to the entry of the Bahá'í Faith
> into their territory.
> 
> Their opposition is understandable - when they learn there are no
> clergy in the Faith they realise there is no future for them as paid pastors. Also, every
> individual in the Faith who joins the Faith is one less person to contribute financially
> and with gifts of food, etc. to the support of the pastor and his family.
> 
> In Australia, some of the Aboriginal settlements that are still under
> the pastoral care of the churches, have banned Bahá'ís from coming onto those
> settlements and the people have to leave the settlement to talk with them. This is denying
> them a basic right of freedom of belief in the same way that some Village Councils have
> banned Bahá'ís from coming into their villages.
> 
> Both Australia and Samoa are signatories to the United Nations Charter
> of Human Rights, but the Churches and Village Councils are still in a position to restrict
> the freedom of religion of people in their areas of administration.
> 
> In Samoa there is the Government law that applies in the towns, but in
> the villages the Mata'i Council governs according to traditional laws and in
> Australia the Government is giving some recognition to tribal laws in tribal areas but the
> white man's law applies in white man's territory.
> 
> In Samoa there is a legend of the promise given by their goddess
> Nafanua that the dynasty of the old gods would soon be superseded by another one, and that
> the new God would rule over all Samoa. In the Australian Aboriginal legends there is the
> promise of a time when sacredness will envelop the world. There is a rainbow dance that is
> done at the time of the initiation of youth into men. The climax is when the Rainbow Snake
> (the origin of creation) swallows the youth. This is when sacredness takes them over and
> they become men. There is a belief in their Dreamtime, or Alcheringa, that when the
> Rainbow Snake awakes and Alcheringa processes the effect of the Europeans, sacredness will
> swallow the world.
> 
> In October 1993 the "Heart of Australia Calling" Festival was
> held in Alice Springs in observance of the Year of Indigenous People, proclaimed by the
> United Nations. Perhaps this was the event to awaken the Rainbow Snake and herald the
> return of the Dreamtime.
> 
> The Pacific Islands have prophecies about the 'Return of the
> Dreamtime' coming when man has finally settled the entire world. This will herald the
> advent of Longo, the Great Peacemaker, the King who will unite all the Tribes, and the
> Manifestation of Rongo, who will have the power to enlighten the West at its darkest
> moment.
> 
> When Raymond Wymarra, Aboriginal Elder of the Injinoo Tribe in Cape
> York, brought a Message Stick to Samoa, and from there, took it to most of the Islands of
> the Pacific, inviting their people to join with the Aboriginal people for the "Heart
> of Australia Calling" Festival, he collected messages of friendship and goodwill for
> presentation to the Aboriginal Tribal Elders at the Festival. Many people from the Pacific
> region flew into Alice Springs to take part in this Festival which created a feeling of
> oneness and unity for the Aboriginal people and their Pacific neighbours.
> 
> The history of the early settlement of the islands tells of the common
> origin of many of the Pacific Island people and of how time and distance have been
> responsible for the differences of language, custom and culture that have developed.
> Perhaps with the 'Return of the Dreamtime', acknowledgment can be given to this
> common heritage and to their common humanity which requires that they live in close
> cooperation and peace with each other for their common good.
> 
> METADATA
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> Views8427 views since posted 2011-09-29; last edit 2025-03-10 06:46 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../trueman_return_dreamtime
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> — *Return of the Dreamtime (Used by permission of the curator)*