Yunupingu death: Garma is a celebration of clans, customs, culture … and a place to talk

What began as a modest barbecue grew into the most important annual event in Indigenous affairs.

Yunupingu with US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy at the Garma Festival in 2022. Picture: Melanie Faith Dove / Yothu Yindi Foundation

What began as a modest barbecue grew into the most important annual event in Indigenous affairs.

More than 3000 people flew into the town of Gove last July for the 23rd Garma Festival, a four-day celebration of Yolngu culture and serious discussion in Indigenous policy and politics. The festival Yunupingu created with his brother, the late Dr M Yunupingu of the band Yothu Yindi, has drawn a succession of prime ministers and some of the most influential corporate leaders to remote northeast Arnhem Land.

They all come to listen to Yunupingu, the host, and to see traditional miny’tji (art), manikay (song), bunggul (dance) and storytelling. The festival is a meeting point for the clans and families of the region.

Garma is also an equaliser. Prime ministers and VIPs sleep in tents set up by volunteers. This is not glamping. Guests walk from their tents – carefully, because of the occasional snake – to communal ablution blocks.

In July, US ambassador Caroline Kennedy was one of them. She had a wonderful time, and refers to it often.

In Perth last month she spoke in glowing terms of her visit to the school Yunupingu established on his homelands two years ago. Ms Kennedy also had dinner with Yunupingu and his family during Garma.

According to Fred Chaney, Aboriginal affairs minister in Malcolm Fraser’s government when Yunupingu emerged as a powerhouse, Garma is a showcase of what Aboriginal people had been trying to explain to the rest of the Australian community.

Mr Chaney has observed Yunupingu’s leadership and his strong culture since the 1970s when the Fraser government worked with him to enact the first Indigenous land rights laws, a direct response to the legal fight over mining on the Gove Peninsula where Yunupingu was born and lived all his life.

“(At Garma) you see displayed the continuing system of law and culture that – as was said in the Gove land case – was a government of laws and not of men,” he said.

“Yunupingu personified the system and its authority.

“It is also a significant political event, often a stage for high-end talks that can set the agenda for Aboriginal and Torres Strait affairs for the coming year.”

Yunupingu’s vision for the festival was to provide a contemporary environment for the expression and presentation of traditional Yolngu knowledge systems and customs, in an authentic Yolngu setting, run by his Yothu Yindi Foundation.

What people say at Garma has impact. In 2019, it was Indigenous Australians minister Ken Wyatt’s duty to explain why his government would not take Australians to a referendum on the voice. In 2022, Anthony Albanese chose Garma to announce the draft wording of a proposed amendment to enshrine the voice in Australia’s founding document.