This clip gives an insight into how story provides a map, and the elder, in knowing the story of the Dog Dreaming, can tell us where the dogs went and the names they gave each area. We begin to get a sense of the importance of story in Indigenous cultures, as the story is also a passageway through country. The fence line in the frame which the elder mentions cuts across the land and, as an artificial boundary, gives us a sense of different times – one ancient and one more recent.

Dog Dreaming synopsis

A documentary that uses observational footage and paintings to tell the Dreaming story of two ancestral dogs.

Dog Dreaming curator's notes

Dog Dreaming is a documentary about the journey of two ancestral dogs across the land that became a Dreaming story. In the land that belongs to the people who speak Mengerrdji, two dogs – the male dog called Adjumalar and the female Womarr – named sites as they crossed the land. Jacob Nayinggu follows their path, telling us what happened to Adjumalar and Womarr as they crossed the country, and how Womarr eventually became a dreaming place at the point where she sank into the ground.

Dog Dreaming is an interesting documentary that invites us into Indigenous cultural beliefs about the land being created by ancestral beings. As Jacob Nayinggu follows the dogs’ journey, he informs us what happened to them and the significance of the sites as a result of the dogs’ passage. Here, we gain an insight into how story is a way of mapping territory, and Jacob Nayinggu can tell us what landmark – a waterhole for example – was created and the name the dogs gave it. But it is the story of Dog Dreaming that Jacob follows as he moves through the land.

Notes by Romaine Moreton