yeperenye dreaming

The Book of Genesis, in the Bible, describes how the world was created.

The rest of the Bible describes how God has always existed, the parts he has played in the history of mankind, and how he still exists and interacts with mankind today.

Aboriginal Dreaming is an amalgam of stories of how the ancestor spirits created and formed the landscape, how the spirits have interacted with mankind over time, and how they still exist and continue to interact with mankind today.

Aboriginal creation stories have a great deal more detail than the creation story in the Bible, and relate quite directly to the landscape in which significant spirits reside. The spirits are the landscape.

The most striking example of this I’ve ever seen is the Yeperenye or caterpillar dreaming of central Australia, around the Alice Springs region.

What I have set out here – in sequence – is my version of how a whitefella might visualise this from spirit form to landscape.

The Yeperenye caterpillars are sometimes referred to as processional caterpillars.

• Clip 1 illustrates how the procession begins.
• Clip 2 provides a good example of a procession well underway.
• The panoramic photo of the area provides a good picture of caterpillars as part of the landscape.
• The dot painting provides an Aboriginal representation of this dreaming.

yeperenye, caterpillar dreaming

by Gavin Arabie


link to source is here

Gavin is an Aranda man, custodian for the main dreaming of Mbantua (Alice Springs): Yeperenye the caterpillar.
This work is also an Aboriginal mapping of Alice with the caterpillar on the left representing the East Mac Donnell ranges and to the right the West MacDonnell Ranges.
Flowing through the Gap, is the Todd river and the concentric circle in the middle refers to an important secret site where initiation ceremonies were performed.

[Late edit - oops, spelled the name Reperenye incorrectly in a few places. Hopefully I now have it right.]