Thrilling the clay of our bodies: Natural sites and the construction of sacredness in Australian aboriginal and Austrian traditions, and in new age philosophy

Indigenous Values and Water Resource Management: A Case Study from the Northern Territory

“…Kolig (1996) finds commonalities between Christian notions of the sacredness of water and Australian Aboriginal beliefs.…”

“…It is often described as a living element that creates the defining shape and character of country (see Toussaint et al 2001;Yu 2000). In contexts where resources or places are under pressure or threat, there is a tendency to focus on key places or sacred sites as people strive to retain their traditions (Kolig 1996). However, the affiliations to water are much broader than those encompassed by the conventional cultural heritage paradigm; these humanitarian values relate to notions of sociality, sacredness, identity and lifegiving.…”

Principles and guidelines for good practice in Indigenous engagement in water planning

“…Water's vitality is underscored in these accounts, including those from the Murray-Darling Basin (Morgan et al, 2004;Weir, 2009). In contexts where resources or places are under pressure, there may be a tendency to focus on key places or sacred sites as people strive to retain their traditions (Kolig, 1996). However, affiliations to water are much broader than those encompassed by the conventional cultural heritage paradigm: these humanitarian values relate to notions of sociality, sacredness, identity and life-giving (Jackson, 2006).…”

Australian alternative spiritualities and a feeling for land

“…One constraint on attempts to emulate Aboriginality was the way that assertions of a radical Aboriginal otherness—central to establishing its value as an auto‐critique of modernity—often undermined any non‐Aboriginal claims to a similar belonging. Moreover, just as critical analysts have tended to compare and contrast Aboriginal and ‘New Age’ perceptions of the land—either noting similarities (Kolig 1996) or essential differences (Sutton 2010)—for all my research participants, Aboriginal relationships to land remained the gold standard. As a result, claims to a deep feeling for land frequently had the defensive air evident in Simon’s speech and in the following snippet from a conversation I had with Cary, a Sydney‐based chef attending an Aboriginal Spirituality festival:…”