The lights go down on the catwalk, as the voice of Witiyana Marika of Yothu Yindi calls out over the sound system, singing bush wallaby manikay (traditional song) in Yolŋu matha. Then Marika’s first-born grandchild, Yolŋu model and Vogue cover star Magnolia Maymuru, dances on to the runway’s red carpet, wallaby-style. The lights go up, revealing Cassie Leatham’s Matriarchs Circles of Life gown, a New Look-style silhouette the Taungurung and Dja Dja Wurrung artist of the Kulin nation created using scrap fabrics and a traditional coil weaving technique.
As Maymuru walks slowly, proudly, down the runway, the song shifts to Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly’s This Land is Mine, a ballad of intertwined perspectives – a settler-colonial one, in which Country can be bought and owned, and an Aboriginal one in which Country and self are inextricably connected.
