Rainbow Serpent Festival renamed Rainbow Spirit Festival to ‘honour’ Indigenous Dreamtime stories

A popular four-day ‘bush doof’ music festival held near Ballarat has changed its name out of respect for Indigenous culture.

The Rainbow Serpent Festival in Lexton, now called the Rainbow Spirit Festival. Photo: Rainbow Spirit Festival / Facebook

Organisers of a regional Victorian music and dance festival have changed the popular event’s name to “honour” Indigenous culture.

The former Rainbow Serpent Festival, a four-day affair held annually in Lexton near Ballarat, will now be called the Rainbow Spirit Festival.

On social media, organisers said the alteration was “in honour and appreciation of the Rainbow Serpent dreaming, and the many other dreaming stories bestowed upon us”.

“We thank our Dja Dja Wurrung and Wadawurrung friends and the many other First Nations Peoples who have shared their stories and teachings with us all,” they said.

In Indigenous culture, the Rainbow Serpent is an ancestral being sometimes associated with water.

Rainbow Spirit Festival communications director Loretta Aguis said plans to change the name had been going on for “many years”.

“It was already on the cards,” she said.

“We had plans when we did announce our festival dates to come out with the name. “Obviously we just felt like we couldn’t kick the can down the road again: even though we haven’t got our festival dates, we thought announcing the name now was the appropriate thing to do and it should have been done earlier.”

Djaara CEO Rodney Carter. Photo: Djaara

Rodney Carter, the chief executive of Central Victorian Traditional Owner group Djaara, said he was in favour of the name change so long as it was done with the right intentions.

“We support people enjoying themselves in whatever appropriate way,” he said.

“We support enjoyment, music, human interaction, that sort of stuff.

“But there is a line that has to be drawn somewhere.”

He said with regard to notorious drug use at the festival, “the last thing we wanted was the Rainbow Serpent being blamed for that”.

In 2012 and 2017, two men died at the Rainbow Serpent Festival.

In 2019, police warned organisers to stamp out “significant drug use” at the event and later fined them $50,000.

“The courtesy in how you frame and use words is really important because you can inadvertently insult,” Mr Carter said.

“People have come to us and asked, because we share language, to call a property Bunjil, which is another ancestral spirit.

“We said, ‘This is really getting into the realm of religion.’ It would be like someone calling their property ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’.

“...At the very least what I say to people is respect the origin of the story.”

The festival in 2019.

Information on the next iteration of the Rainbow Spirit Festival, from now on set to be “a lot smaller than previous years”, remains forthcoming as organisers seek a multi-year permit.

The 2023 event, meant for the latter part of the year near summer, would mark a return to the festival’s typical format since bushfires in 2019 and the Covid pandemic forced cancellations.

“While we’d love nothing more than to announce our next festival dates, the site permit renewal process has been more complex and time consuming than we’d anticipated,” organisers said.

“Quite simply our situation has significantly more hoops to jump through than most event sites and despite making good progress, we still have a way to go before we can securely lock in a festival date.

“We are confident of gaining the approvals needed, we just need to take our time to ensure the best outcome for the event and the ongoing protection and preservation of our beautiful site.”

In May, the state government officially registered a new, Indigenous name for a creek in central Victoria to replace one with racial connotations.