Dhopiya Gurruwiwi’s family at heart of Garma Festival hope

Every winter, the PM and leaders from across the nation visit northeast Arnhem Land to talk policy, progress – and lack of it – but Dhopiya Gurruwiwi takes her place at the Garma Festival for family.

Dhopiya Gurruwiwi (with Tinkerbell), Selma Raliny Gurruwiwi, Rachael Dhurrkay and Dorothy Garrawurra in Gulkula. Picture: Melanie Faith Dove

Every winter, the prime minister and leaders from across the nation visit a bush escarpment in northeast Arnhem Land to talk policy, progress – and lack of it – but Dhopiya Gurruwiwi takes her place at the Garma Festival for family.

As the first of 3000 people began to arrive at Gulkula on Thursday for the nation’s biggest Indigenous affairs event, Dhopiya was already settled in at her campsite with daughter Selma, granddaughter Rachael and great granddaughter Dorothy.

Garma is a joyous time for Dhopiya, whose late brothers – famous clan leader Yunupingu and the musician known as Dr M – started the festival in 1999.

“I am here because of my brothers,” she said.

The Gumatj matriarch will spend the next four days with her own clan and Aboriginal people from other Yolngu clans across Arnhem Land.

In the spirit of the festival that began as a barbecue with dancing, she will enjoy the Bungul – performed by Yolngu men – and talk to non-Aboriginal people who want to understand a little more about her art and culture.

Daughter Selma said they will paint together this Garma. “We are so happy,” Selma said.

Yunupingu, one of Australia’s most influential figures, always intended that Garma would celebrate and showcase Yolngu culture. But he also shaped it into an important forum of ideas.

On Wednesday, the Productivity Commission delivered nothing short of a broadside to the commonwealth, state and NT governments and their bureaucracies over their failure to change the way they do business in Indigenous affairs. The grim results are published in the commission’s latest Closing the Gap report.

Dorothy and Tinkerbell. Picture: Melanie Faith Dove

It is something new Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy is expected to address in some detail when she takes questions as part of a Garma panel on Friday.

Senator McCarthy took charge of the Albanese government’s contribution to the Closing the Gap agreement less than a week ago and one of her first public statements was to call for bipartisanship on the issue.

On Thursday the Moriarty Foundation pointed to government responses to its successful work with women at Borroloola as an example of why the gap is not closing fast enough, and even widening in some areas.

The Indigenous children’s charity worked with local Aboriginal women to design an early childhood program the women run themselves. The results have bucked a national trend – a majority of children in Borroloola are now developmentally on track when they start preschool.

Yet the program lacks certainty because government has been willing to fund it for only six or sometimes 12 months at a time.

“Policy needs to catch up with us,” said Moriarty Foundation chief executive Jo Shulman. “Meeting Closing the Gap targets is complex, especially in remote communities, and requires a holistic long-term approach designed and implemented by Aboriginal communities to succeed.

“This approach is at odds with the current government-siloed processes that focus on providing short-term funding at best for innovators like us, with a preference for funding the way things have always been done.”

On Thursday, Coalition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price told The Australian the Closing the Gap report demonstrated the system was seriously failing Australia’s most marginalised “and there remains much work to be done”.

“It’s concerning to see the gap widening particularly in the Northern Territory, where eight of the 15 targets are not on track,” she said. “The gap simply isn’t going to close any further unless we get our priorities straight.”