“Garma” in Yolngu worldview is a public ceremony embodying the meeting of fresh and saltwater. The place where the waters meet is significant: it is a rich environment where life and ideas can thrive. Yolngu say Garma strives for balance between competing ideas, to find a future that is better than the past.
When the festival began in 1999 at Gulkula in north-east Arnhem land it was a small gathering, the vision of the late Gumatj leader Yunupingu and the Yothu Yindi Foundation. Garma was to be a place where balanda (whitefellas) and Yolngu could come together and discuss, debate and create new pathways.
As Yolngu have patiently described in the 25 years since then, when fresh and saltwater meet, they can become murky. But once they settle, things become clear.
As the nation moves toward a referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament some time between September and December, the waters are murky. In essence, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told Garma on Saturday there had been an active and determined campaign to keep them that way.
Albanese described it as “confected outrage”, an attempt by the opposition to sow “noise and confusion”.
Yunupingu, the Gumatj clan leader who has driven the Garma phenomenon since its inception, has gone now. He was mourned and celebrated at the festival this year. But the great legacy of his work is clear: big progress in on-country education, strong economic development and a direct line of influence to leaders in politics, business and the arts.
The Dhupuma-Barker school allows Yolngu children the chance of quality, two-way education on their homelands. The next stage is the Garma Institute, a Yolngu-owned and run tertiary facility for which the federal Labor government has allocated $6.4m. The plan is for a co-designed university curriculum led by a Yolngu faculty of senior knowledge holders, and the vision is for Yolngu children to be able to go from preschool to university, on country and on their own terms.
There’s also the revitalisation of the Dilak council, another of Yunupingu’s long-term goals. The council is made up of the senior leaders of 13 Yolngu clan groups in the region. They are a voice to federal and territory government – a representative group based on traditional governance structures, who can advise on health, housing, education and economic development.
Albanese met with them on arrival at Garma on Friday, keen to show an uncertain voting public that “there is nothing to fear” from giving First Nations a voice.
“Dilak is an example of … how we achieve better results, because we know when we listen to people that are directly affected by issues, we get better outcomes,” Albanese told reporters after the meeting. “That, as well as recognition in Australia’s constitution, is what the referendum that will be held in the last quarter of this year is about.”
Yolngu have sought to embody the mixing of ideas in the Garma program each year. There is a standing invitation to all sides of politics to attend, “no” campaigners as welcome as “yes”.
In parliament the week before Garma, the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, said he was not attending the festival. Dutton explained his reasoning to Sydney radio station 2GB.
“I’ve been up to north-east Arnhem Land twice this year. I’ve been to… Aboriginal communities in WA. I’ve been to Alice Springs, I’ve been to Darwin,” he said. “It will be a love-in [for] the yes advocates and proponents, and that’s fine. I’m not going up there to pretend that I’m somebody that I’m not. I’m a genuine person, straightforward. I’ve looked at this meticulously. I’m not supporting the voice.”
Dutton said he thought the voice would divide Australians.
At Garma, Yolngu open their home to people from all walks of life. Each year the festival attracts an eclectic crowd of influential people. Last year it was the US ambassador, Caroline Kennedy; this time around it is the British high commissioner, Vicki Treadell, who danced with Yolngu women in the opening night bunggul [dance] alongside the Indigenous affairs minister, Linda Burney, and Albanese’s partner, Jodie Haydon.
On Saturday, the chairman of the Yothu Yindi Foundation, Djawa Yunupingu, explained to the crowd that the open invitation remains fundamental to Yolngu.
“We are all in this together, and all Australians are part of us,” Yunupingu said.
“You are all part of our reality. We welcome you here. We listen to you. And we bring you into our ceremony and the life of our people. We don’t expect you to know all and every detail. We don’t expect you to know even one word from our song cycles.
“We don’t expect you to be there every moment during our rituals. Or as we care for the country or use the country. But we include you as fellow Australians.
“You are in our constitution already. You are here. And we don’t deny the reality of who you are and the life that you have lived in modern Australia. If we denied you, we would be denying the world around us.”
Yunupingu said Yolngu had hope for the future, another meaning of Garma.
“I believe in a world that is better than the past,” he said. “We love this country. It is Australia to us. We want it to be strong and powerful from north to south to east to west. And we want to be in it. We don’t want to be sitting on the side waiting for Garma every year.
“We want each day to be a day when we are fully engaged in the life of the nation, through the rule book that runs Australia – the constitution.
“We stay strong with our laws and our constitutions, but our laws do not run the country, the Australian constitution runs the country. And it is governed by the parliament and the courts, and the taxes that we pay, and the allies we make and the enemies we fight. Yet Australia is not complete.
“Australia is built on an ancient foundation. Let the voice of our people be in the constitution. Let it be a given shape by our parliament. Let us then have the conversations that make things right, for the children that will inherit the nation from us.”
Yunupingu said the referendum was a chance to unite the country, not divide it.
“On behalf of my family, I say that it is time for the nation to believe that we can be complete,” he said. “It is time to trust ourselves as a nation, to trust our parliament, to trust our democracy. And to trust each other.
“I believe in this pathway – a pathway to unity.”
