Body,Vision and Movement: in the Footprints of the Ancestors

Ethnographic writings on Australian Aboriginal ontology and epistemology have overlooked the phenomenological significance of the body and notions of embodiment in the relationship between people and land. In focusing on the body as a spatio-temporal ‘hinge’ between people and place, I explore the pervasive images of bodily transformations, directional movement and traces, in the cosmogony, cosmology and life-world of the Yolngu people of Northeast Arnhem Land. The image of the footprint as a synthesis of living body, vision and movement, perception and intentionality, embodies the dynamic and creative nature pertaining to the fashioning and negotiation of group identity.