Yunupingu death: From First Nations broken Heart to voice of authority

The Indigenous voice appeared to be slipping away four years ago when Yunupingu elegantly and firmly put it back on the political agenda.

Yunupingu with Noel Pearson and Marcia Langton at the Garma Festival in 2019. Picture: Melanie Faith Dove/Yothu Yindi Foundation

The Indigenous voice to parliament appeared to be slipping away four years ago when Yunupingu elegantly and firmly put it back on the political agenda, backed by his great collaborators, Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson.

The Gumatj clan leader used his 2019 Garma speech to call for significant constitutional reform at a time when prime minister Scott Morrison was giving every indication he was not interested.

It was a significant moment and a fillip for a movement that appeared to many to have stalled two years after the Uluru Statement from the Heart generated so much hope.

“Constitution is a right close to Aboriginal people’s hearts, and mine,” Yunupingu said in his address.

“It is a bigger word than any Yolngu person can imagine to think about but it is a word that we must use because it matters.”

Yunupingu, the host, appeared at Garma flanked by Yolngu dancers. On this day he was seated in a wheelchair yet looked utterly formidable dressed in black with ceremonial headwear.

“We are thinking of our Constitution, how we can change it and make it a real law for Yolngu people as well as Balanda (non-­Indigenous) people,” he said in his 2019 speech.

“We are doing that, asking for the rights to be accepted by the commonwealth government and by everybody else.”

However, Yunupingu was just warming up. His speech hit a crescendo when he told the first Aboriginal person in cabinet, Indigenous Australians minister Ken Wyatt, that if the government did not fix the Constitution then the Yolngu people would throw it in the sea.

Mr Wyatt and Yunupingu had a good rapport, and while the clan leader’s message was delivered to the minister’s face it was clearly meant for Mr Morrison – who did not attend – and unsupportive members of his frontbench.

“If they don’t come to us with an answer, we will tell you what we going to do, what the Yolngu people going to do,” he said.

“We will dismiss the Constitution … we thrown it out of Australia into the saltwater,” he said.

“It will be wonderful. The Yolngu people will stand on the land and see if that document will float away into the ocean. That’s what is going to happen.”

That Garma festival, the last before Covid-19 shut the event down for two years, showed Australia that Yunupingu, Professor Langton and Mr Pearson were again working together on the issue of constitutional reform. Over that weekend, they each made powerful declarations in favour of the voice and against its critics.

Close observers of the path to constitutional recognition saw this as highly important. The three had co-operated in 2007, at the beginning of the NT intervention, to call for constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Such is their influence, it was the beginning of 10 years of bipartisanship on the issue and led to the Uluru Statement.

Soon after Yunupingu’s clarion call, Mr Wyatt announced that he had commissioned a senior advisory group of Australians to develop a possible model for the voice. The result, by Professor Langton and Tom Calma, was 272 pages of proposed detail that is likely to be crucial in the event of a successful referendum.