Evaluate the impact of European colonisation on Aboriginal belief systems

Religion informs every aspect of Aboriginal life, giving a spiritual understanding of the environment, of human beings and their place in that environment and of relations between people. The foundation of Aboriginal religious belief if the “Dreaming.” The dreaming is a complicated concept with multiple meanings but for the Aboriginal people, the dreaming represents the beginning of life and nature, the beginning of all patterns and cycles associated with the environment and the creation of the world in its present form. At a certain point powerful spiritual beings emerged and were also referred to by the term dreaming. The dreaming traveled across the landscape in various life forms along what they called dreaming tracks and in their adventures gave the country its shape. They are said to still be there today as an Aboriginal may refer to his/her ancestors as “My Dreaming.”
In 1770 Captain Cooks encounter with the aboriginal people was marked with violence but the European co...