Thinking Allowed
In July 2022 I was very fortunate to attend the Garma Festival supported by a SCEGGS Professional Learning Scholarship. Garma is held annually at the ceremonial site of Gulkula, 40 kilometres out of Nhulunbuy in remote northeast Arnhem Land. It is widely known as Australia’s premier Indigenous event. This four day festival celebrates the cultural, artistic and ceremonial traditions of the Yolngu people. The Garma Festival is an important community gathering for the clans and families of the northeast Arnhem Land area. It has the warmth and spirit of a large family reunion with enthusiastic sharing of traditional dance, story telling and live music. It has a spirit of sharing and participation rather than just observation. Industrious Indigenous and Non-Indigenous artists stand side by side creating communal large scale art works. The open grasslands are dotted with people sitting on picnic blankets learning to weave, paint and make jewellery.
The Garma Festival has also become a regular date on the political and corporate calendar. It attracts 2,500 delegates from some of our country’s largest corporations as well as Australian and international political leaders, philanthropists, intellectuals, academics, educators and journalists. A simultaneously held Garma Youth Forum attracts Indigenous and Non-Indigenous secondary students primarily from the Northern Territory, Queensland and New South Wales. Festival participants are given a unique window into a slice of life not often seen outside of homeland communities. It is the first time I have felt like an outlier in my own country – surrounded by language very new to my ears, cultural practices and etiquette that I was keen to learn and respect and a witness to a profound connection and reliance on the land.
The busy festival program began early with dawn crying ceremonies and bush tucker walks. Afternoons featured a daily athletic display of bunggul (dance) showcasing the talents of the very youngest through to the oldest family members accompanied by live traditional Indigenous music. Evenings finished late with biographical or historical Indigenous movies at the outdoor cinema and indigenous bands playing music to a lively crowd dancing and singing along. Lunch times were opportunities to learn traditional art techniques and admire the stunning works on display in the outdoor gallery. The local snake population were particularly taken with frequenting the gallery!
Whilst I enjoyed and valued these activities for their artistic, creative and educational merit, the Garma Festival’s Key Forum Conference was the greatest source of knowledge and transformation for me. At this conference, festival delegates gathered to learn about the most pressing Indigenous issues from the people they affect most and from specialists working in this space. In 2022 the topics of these daily key forums included the current state of play in Indigenous health, unemployment, education, incarceration, land rights and politics. The question and answer sessions in these lectures made for robust discussions, highly charged debates and inspiring ideas and solutions for a more equal and unified future.
The key forums were equally confronting and heartbreaking in the statistical comparison between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians. Only two of the nine Closing the Gap targets are on track – employment of Indigenous adults and land rights. The other seven including healthy birth weights, finishing Year 12, appropriate housing and reducing suicide rates have fallen behind target. The common ground between each lecture was the longevity and complexity of the problems remaining unresolved. It was at times hard to be in the room with mixed feelings of being humbled to be present but shamed by the past and troubled by the intergenerational trauma of our Indigenous people who live these statistics.
As an educator I was particularly drawn to the Garma Festival key forum lectures on Indigenous education. These lectures were delivered by Indigenous and Non-Indigenous academics, teachers, politicians and anthropologists. In contrast to some of the other forums, there was an exciting, tangible spirit of progress about the Indigenous education space with new models emerging and statistics showing early signs of success. From these daily education forums came three clear and consistent messages. The first key message was that all schools need to include and prioritise accurate, truthful Australian history teaching and Indigenous cultural units. In the past the teaching of Indigenous history and culture has been challenging with teachers citing a lack of resources and non-indigenous teachers somewhat uncomfortable about authentically sharing a culture which is not their own. Given the importance of these inclusions in school curriculum there are now a wealth of resources available particularly through the pioneering and prolific work of Professor Marcia Langton from the University of Melbourne. At the Garma Festival, Professor Langton stressed the importance of schools connecting with their local indigenous community to draw upon a primary source of indigenous culture. Garma lecturer, proud Bunuba woman and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Social Justice Commissioner, June Oscar, passionately stated at Garma 2022 that all students, not just Indigenous students, have “Not just a right to be educated but a right to be educated about Indigenous societies – how dare we not include their history and issues in our curriculum given they are the oldest continuous civilisation in the world – it is a denial of the worth of our knowledge as a people. Weaving language, knowledge and culture into mainstream education empowers both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous students. First Nation’s history and knowledge should be compulsory as Australian children deserve an accurate and truthful history of their country.”
The second of these key messages was that ideally Indigenous education needs to be conducted on country or close to home. In the Northern Territory 70% of Indigenous people live in the rural areas whereas in New South Wales 70% of Indigenous people live in the cities so close to home can potentially mean very different educational settings between states. Indigenous Elders at Garma expressed the importance of Indigenous students needing to stay connected to other Indigenous students, to community and to culture otherwise their educational experience could be very isolating. Whilst the Indigenous women at Garma acknowledged education as the most important transformational vehicle in a girl’s life, they shared that it is crucial that this learning doesn’t come at the cost of cultural and Indigenous values. With this in mind, Studio Schools Australia has plans to establish secondary schools on country across remote areas in northern Australia. The first of these schools in Yiramalay in the Kimberley is operating with a full residential model of learning on country with a focus on health and wellbeing, staying close to family and community and strengthening culture and language. This program is predominantly staffed by local Indigenous bilingual teachers. In the Kimberley and across northern Australia the Indigenous school attendance rate in 2022 was 10%, whereas Studio Schools Australia’s Yiramalay campus had an attendance rate of 90% in 2022. A strong and exciting message that this model is working.
The third key message was that Indigenous education needs to be informed by Indigenous leaders. Yolngu education consultants at Garma stressed that they need to be at the table and not just on the menu when Indigenous education decisions are being made. As one Elder succinctly phrased it, “nothing about us should be decided without us and never walk in front of me as I may not follow – walk beside me”. This need for “talking with me not about me” was reiterated on a larger scale by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at last year’s Garma Festival. I was fortunate to witness Albanese’s announcement regarding the need to settle as soon as possible on the referendum question asking for an alteration to the constitution that establishes an Indigenous voice in this term of parliament. Australia’s history of referendums sees only eight of 44 nationwide referendums carried. I am hoping that the Australian public see this referendum as transcending political allegiance and a historic opportunity to right a long overdue wrong. This is about people not politics.
I encourage all members of our wider school community to read the Uluru Statement from the Heart and take the time to make an informed and thoughtful response to the upcoming referendum. I would also urge you to consider including the Garma Festival in professional and personal development experiences for you and your employees. It was a life changing four days that raised more questions than it answered. My pledge to the Yolngu people was that even if I never came back to Garma, I would share the messages that I heard there and the opportunity to write this article is just the beginning of that important promise.
Allison Harrigan
Musical Director of Choirs (K-12)
