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Australian Aboriginal culture is complex and extraordinarily diverse. It is one of the world's longest surviving cultures. There were over 500 different clan groups or 'nations' around the continent, many with distinctive cultures and beliefs. Hundreds of languages and dialects existed (although many are now extinct), as well as a variety of different customs and rituals, art forms, styles of painting, forms of food, and hunting habits. Land is fundamental to the well-being of Aboriginal people. …

…animals or stars or hills or other objects. For Australians, the past is still alive and vital today and will remain so into the future. The Ancestor Spirits and their powers have not gone, they are present in the forms into which they changed at the end of the Dreamtime or Dreaming, as the stories tell. The stories have been handed down through the ages and are an integral part of an Indigenous person's Dreaming.