The Sacred in Australian Literature: An Introduction

In the cultural and political polarity of Irish Catholic and Establishment Anglican churches, in the vigorous and formative intervention of church politics into Australian political life, one definition might see the role of the sacred as fundamental to Australian history. During the 1990s, debates concerning the traditional and sacred beliefs of colonized, indigenous, and marginalized peoples increased g ready in importance to post-colonial studies. Since the Enlightenment, the sacred has been an ambivalent area in most Western thinking, which has uniformly tended to privilege the secular. Aboriginal art and spirituality are characterized by inscription on the land and the body rather than by pictorial representation, and "Balanda Rock Art" alludes to the desecration of that sacred land by the graffiti and the detritus of modem life. The rocks would have their own Law and nature, be bound by sets of rules; they will belong to one or other clan grouping, be associated with particular body designs; and because of the inherent power of forms that may have connections to the dreaming ancestors, those who own or are guardians of the territory will seek to express that power relationship in human and relational terms (Rose 53-8): by rituals of well-being, in formal and informal rhetorical greetings, by taking responsibility for country, by celebrating it, by claiming identity ("I am that rock; that is my mother's mother"), by creating artifacts (song, dance, artwork) which honor it.