Introduction

Since 1984, there has been a remarkable change in the way in which anthropologists and other scholars have approached Australian Aboriginal religions, and there has also been a significant revaluation of past observers and thinkers such as Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, T. G. H. Strehlow and W. E. H. Stanner. Stanner has emerged as the central figure in the study of Aboriginal religions. A number of scholars have remarked that Aboriginal groups, such as the Yolngu, for example, see their artistic output as a way of showing white Australians something of the riches of their spiritual and religious life. The religious basis of the legislation is quite clear in that it involves the myths and rituals of Aboriginal groups and the recognition of ‘sacred sites’, that is, places made ‘sacred’ by their connection with the activities of the Ancestor Beings of the Dreaming.