jumpingjacktrash:

kgaele:

jumpingjacktrash:

ariaste:

ariaste:

IDK if you guys are following the current trashfire over on twitter, but there’s this new group who are trying to “encourage” authors to stop focusing on “political messages” or “complaining about world events” and “steer the sci-fi/fantasy community of creators away from the bickering and fighting over non- sci-fi/fantasy issues and back to just creating wonderful new stories”. They’re explicitly aspiring to form a space where “all viewpoints are welcome and valued” (translation: “You know, I think we should hear out the Nazis, maybe they have some good arguments”).

Also they’re sympathetic to the Sad Puppies. Also they called my agent a cancer on SFF.
:DDDDDDDDD ENJOY THE THREAD.

Yo, fun facts –

So “dreamtime” was originally (1899) a mistranslation by a white ethnographer of an ATSI (Indigenous Australian) term “Alcheringa”. It was promptly criticized in the community of ethnographers for being a mistranslation/misunderstanding and usage in the academic community dropped out until the term was revived in the 1970s for a more broaaaaad definition, the mythological phenomenon described in the thread above.

What I was not aware of is that the mistranslation persisted in English-speaking communities to refer to those ATSl cultural belief sets! (When I was taking mythology classes in college, we used ATSI terms for ATSI concepts). Some very kind people on twitter gave me some sources and gently corrected me.

So let’s just all agree in the future to use the alternate term “strongtime” instead of “dreamtime” when we’re talking about the stuff that my thread concerned, y/y? It’s just less fraught with shitty colonialism and it costs zero dollars to not be an asshole, u get me?

SO NOW WE KNOW THAT

ok this is a REALLY GREAT THREAD but no, i’m not giving up ‘dreamtime’ as a term of art for narrative space. @ariaste you just underwent the process described in the thread – with regards to the word ‘dreamtime’. it was a lovely, evocative word, and then you found out it was politically tainted, and now you want to avoid it.

plus, it just makes more sense. if ‘strongtime’ is the correct term for australian mythology, then of course we should use it for that. but it doesn’t describe narrative space in general nearly as well as ‘dreamtime’.

aboriginal australians have reclaimed ‘dreamtime’ to mean that specific thing in their culture, in the town I lived in in central queensland there was a wonderful building that sadly closed before I could ever visit called the ‘dreamtime cultural center’ which had the history of the aboriginee peoples that live in the area. Reading about the dreamtime is really interesting and educational!

Using the same word to describe the narrative thing seems fine from what I know through my prior interactions with aborginee cultural practices. The thing that’s a Please Don’t from what I researched and asked about is using the actual dreamtime as a spice for fantasy/sci-fi stories and such if you aren’t yourself aboriginal australian, because it’s part of a living culture that holds stories and history as sacred.

also after rambling in the tags i just want to share a really lovely thing i learned at the retreat:

this is migaloo! migaloo is a white humpback whale that migrates past the island regularly and is sacred to the woppaburra people who live on what is now known as north keppel island, but the traditional name is konomie. His name means “white fella”. The woppaburra are part of a wider whale dreaming indigenous community around australia, and the spiritual salt water totem for them is mugga mugga, (the humpback whale).

i’ve blathered on a bit mainly because aboriginal mythology is really cool and there are so many distinct cultural groups and i just wanted to share what i know about the people who were kind enough to welcome me to their home and tell me their stories. I checked to be sure I wasn’t mangling anything c:
https://australianmuseum.net.au/woppaburra-people-of-the-keppel-islands (in case anyone wants to read more about the history! cw for some very sad stuff though)

thank you for adding this, knowing about this sacred whale friend added to my life’s happiness ❤