Songline
A path across the land, remembered in songs, that links sacred sites.
Also: dreaming track
A songline, or Dreaming track, is a route across Australia that follows the journeys of ancestral beings, and which is encoded in song, story and dance. By singing the songs in the correct order, a person can navigate the landscape, finding waterholes, food and sacred sites across hundreds of kilometres. Songlines cross the territories of different groups, who each care for their part, and a song may change language along the way, while the melody stays the same. They are both map and law, and a way of keeping knowledge alive. Some songlines are millennia old and are being recorded with the help of elders.
Region: Oceania