The Dreaming, also known as Dreamtime, is a term used to describe a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal beliefs. It is a period in which life was created according to Aboriginal culture, and it explains the origin of the universe and workings of nature and humanity. The Dreaming shapes and structures life through the regulation and understanding of family life, the relations between the sexes, and obligations to people, land, and spirits. The Dreaming is not a long way away, but it is the environment that First Nations People lived in, and still do today. It is an all-embracing concept that provides rules for living, a moral code, as well as rules for interacting with the natural environment. The Dreaming embraces past, present, and future, and it is constantly evolving to explain events and changes today.

The Dreaming is difficult to explain in terms of non-Aboriginal cultures, and it has been described as "a total, integrated way of life ... a lived daily reality". It is a coordinated system of belief and action that includes totemism, and together, they express a close relationship between man and nature. The Dreaming is not static or linear, and it is the past, present, and future. It is the foundation of Aboriginal religion and culture, and it dates back some 65,000 years. The Dreaming is a period on a continuum of past, present, and future, and it is learned about through Dreamtime creation folklores that tell of the momentous actions of the creators. The Dreaming is the worldview that structures many Indigenous cultures, providing Indigenous Australians with an ordered sense of reality, a framework for understanding and interpreting the world, and the place of humans in that world.