In 1999, when the Garma festival was conceived in north-east Arnhem Land, Yolŋu leaders knew the potential it had to bring about change.
“I seen it. Mandawuy and myself, we seen it … it’s gonna be big,” says Rirratjingu clan leader Witiyana Marika, who was one of the leaders at that first meeting held in someone’s back yard.
Others who were there included late Yolŋu leaders from the Gumatj clan – land rights activist Galarrwuy Yunupingu and his brother, Yothu Yindi frontman Mandawuy Yunupingu. The brothers spearheaded the festival in an effort to preserve and promote Yolŋu culture, with the festival serving as a vital platform for political dialogue and cross-cultural engagement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. They named it for the traditional Yolŋu concept meaning a “two-way learning” place, which became the overall theme for the festival.
Marika says the festival was also a way of showing Australian governments that “we are strong people still and powerful”.
“The other clans came in and recognised through this ceremony, Garma,” he says. “It’s based on a Yolŋu reflecting back to the creator, the creators that journeyed on through the source of lore, that we are full of energy and power.
“Our hope is to [make] government recognise … to recognise and come be a part of us and being one, for all other Australians.
“We are one nation, and to the balanda [white people] nation, being one … hope, peace and love.”
This year, the 26th year of the festival, and the 50th anniversary of the Northern Territory Land Rights Act, Yolŋu leaders also announced a separation. In a landmark announcement in his speech on Saturday, the Yothu Yindi Foundation chair and Gumatj Corporation leader, Djawa Yunupingu, announced that the 13 clans of north-east Arnhem Land wanted to split from the Northern Land Council to create a new body.
“There will be a new land council in Arnhem Land and it will be called the Dilak Land Council and it will be the power for our future,” Yunupingu told the crowd.
If approved, it will be the first new land council in the NT in 35 years. Yunupingu thanked the leaders of the NLC “who have protected us and made us strong”.
“It will work with government and with mining companies and any company who wants to do business with us.
“It will work in partnership with the Northern Land Council for the people.
“We will be a part of the economic life of this nation, whilst never losing who we are and what we stand for.”
The announcement came one day after the NT chief minister, Lia Finocchiaro, announced in her keynote speech at Garma a deal that would see the Rirratjingu clan take ownership of the town lease of Nhulunbuy, which faces an uncertain economic future with the bauxite mine owned by global mining giant Rio Tinto set to close in 2029.
Finocchiaro said her government was with the Yolŋu people “every step of the way” for the “post-mining transition” and that “real growth and prosperity do not come from government working alone”.
Finocchiaro said she and Gumatj and Rirratjingu leaders had written a joint letter to the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, suggesting fuel tankers on the Gove peninsula be made part of the nation’s fuel reserve plan.
Yolŋu elder Yananymul Mununggurr, of the Djapu clan, told Guardian Australia that she hoped Finocchiaro “got the message of what we are trying to achieve” in north-east Arnhem Land.
‘Come back to the table’
But Finocchiaro’s speech did not mention her government’s controversial child protection laws, which have been widely criticised and led to the resignation of the NT’s children’s commissioner.
Mununggurr said the NT government needed to “come back to the table” and “build a relationship” with all First Nations people across the territory.
Mununggurr has been advocating for the more than 1,500 people living on homelands spread across the territory, where there has been no updated housing for decades.
“The territory government making these decisions without even consulting all the Aboriginal people that live in the territory, including us mob here in north-east Arnhem region,” she said.
“But on the other hand, it’s a matter that needs to be dealt with properly. Instead of having the government itself, the territory government itself making decisions, making policies that is gonna damage the lives of Aboriginal people in the territory.
“They need to stop that and they need to stop and listen to what we are saying.”
The Cape York leader Noel Pearson suggested that state and territory governments should be bypassed altogether when dealing with remote communities.
In his first major speech since the failure of the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum, Pearson told those at Garma that “remote Australia must become the sole jurisdiction of the commonwealth”.
“These communities and their lands would still come under the shared jurisdiction of the relevant states and territories’ foremost functions governed by the state’s constitutional responsibilities, but the administrative relationship for Aboriginal affairs would lie with the commonwealth,” Pearson said.
“There should be no need for Aboriginal affairs departments in the states and territories.
“This would rationalise duplicated governmental systems and institutions. It would stop Indigenous affairs being the black hole for state and territory government budgets.”
‘Listening to our elders’
The federal minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, says Garma is about not just sitting with Yolŋu elders but listening to them, and seeking to “understand if I’m on the right track” with Aboriginal affairs in the region.
The NT senator says she then takes those conversations “back with me to the cabinet table” to discuss.
“Listening to our elders is really important and not just here in north-east Arnhem Land but wherever I go across the country,” she says.
“I have to say, I have never felt such strength since the referendum,” she tells Guardian Australia. “It’s really quite powerful. People are feeling strong again. People are feeling ready to really embrace what the future holds.
“We are calling on them to stay strong and resilient.”
The national commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, Sue-Anne Hunter, says that despite the concerns of advocates around changes such as those affecting child protection, people she spoke to at Garma expressed a desire to look to the future.
“Mob here are really hopeful and they just want to get on with it … but they know in the background that this is going on,” she says.
