ABSTRACT
Nancy Munn and Fred R. Myers, in particular, have convincingly shown the commonality of cultural patterning of human movement and ancestral or Dreaming movement. The identity of a particular ancestral figure may not necessarily or easily be read off from the sensible properties of places. Aborigines are often heard to say about places that their meanings are forever and sometimes in invidious comparison, that whitefella meanings are transitory. The apparent permanence of certain kinds of Aboriginal meanings of place, their “forever” quality, enthralls not only Aborigines’ imagination, but also that of non-Aboriginal Australia. Not far southwest of Katherine town is a place that has become known to many Aborigines and some whites as Catfish Dreaming. In 1984, Catfish Dreaming was declared a site by the Aboriginal Sacred Sites Protection Authority, based on information from senior people affiliated with three different socio-territorial groupings—Jawoyn, Wardaman, and Mayali.
