In the pre-dawn darkness, I sit cross-legged in the red dirt and listen to the women sing and cry. Here in this escarpment overlooking the Gulf of Carpentaria in Australia’s Northern Territory, the majestic stringybark trees sway gently in time. The voices of the Aboriginal elders, a melding of sorrow and comfort, send chills across my skin and make my heart race. I tilt my head back and see a shooting star traveling across the sky.
Song is a crucial transmission mode for our hosts, the Yolngu people of northeastern Arnhem Land. It is how knowledge is taught, described and shared. The women carry out this sacred ceremony as it has been done for thousands of years, with wailings of loss, of longing, memories and ancestral belonging.
I am part of a group of invited guests, who have traveled from across the nation to observe this ritual as part of Australia’s largest indigenous culture exchange, the Garma Festival of Traditional Culture. Conceived in 1999 by the Yothu Yindi Foundation, this yearly event provides an authentic setting for the expression of sharing of traditional knowledge systems and customs. There are forums with indigenous leaders, activists and thinkers; political, social and economic discussions; and the sharing of traditions, music, art, cinema, dance and storytelling. Attendees sleep in tents, shower in communal facilities and eat together in an open-air dining room.
Yolngu people traditionally learn from observation, by looking and listening. It is a contrast to the British colonizers who declared Australia “terra nullius” — Latin for “nobody’s land” — two centuries ago, entrenching endemic discrimination against the land’s indigenous owners.
Garma gives attendees a window in a slice of life not often seen outside of remote communities — it shows both the resilience of First Nations’ people and the impact of Australia’s history of injustice against them. From the violent dispossession of indigenous people from their lands to the White Australia Policy, a racist doctrine that lasted generations before being phased out in the 1960s, and the broken promises of successive governments, our history is littered with cruelty and political inertia.
Former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke’s promise of a treaty in 1988 — now considered “unfinished business” by the indigenous community, sparked Yothu Yindi’s 1991 protest anthem, Treaty. There has been some progress made, with a landmark law passed in 1993 returning some ancestral land back to the traditional owners and an official apology in parliament in 2008 for misdeeds, including the forcible removal of thousands of indigenous children from their homes in the name of assimilation.
Just two days prior, I had stepped off the plane at Gove Airport and onto the bus bound for the remote Gulkula ceremonial grounds where the festival is held. As much as four days felt like a infinitesimal amount of time to learn about a people and culture that has spanned at least 65,000 years, for many attendees this was their first time engaging with indigenous Australians. Riding with me was a senior official from a major bank. I spied some mining executives I recognized. A CEO here, a university boss there.
The plan was for them to listen.
“Racism works 24/7 to reproduce racial inequalities, regardless of the deliberate intentions of those who are in the state apparatus,” Leanne Liddle, a Central Arrernte woman and director of the Northern Territory Aboriginal Justice Unit, told the gathering. “It is not limited to poisonous attitudes and violent or abusive behaviors because it includes laws that impact overwhelmingly against some groups, rather than others.”
Walking back to my tent after the women’s crying ceremony, the deliberateness of the cohort of decisionmakers, business leaders, international politicians, academics and journalists made sense. One is already on board: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Prime ministers have been coming to Garma for a decade to lay out their plans for indigenous affairs, but this year was different, with the Uluru Statement from the Heart in focus.
A petition with roots spanning back 85 years, the Uluru Statement seeks constitutional change to enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to have a voice in parliament. To a capacity crowd gathered before the outdoor stage, Albanese promised to hold a referendum by the end of his first term in office in 2025. He spoke of “over 200 years of broken promises and betrayals, failures and false starts,” and noted “a voice enshrined in the constitution cannot be silenced.” His words received a standing ovation. Now he has to deliver.
To get a referendum over the line, Albanese is facing historically low, but not impossible odds. Since federation, Australia has had 44 referendums, with only eight carried. In 1999, the first question on the ballot was whether the nation should become a republic. The second one was to include a preamble to the constitution that would include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Both failed.
Before that, you would have to go back more than 30 years to 1967 to find the last time the indigenous population was the focus of a referendum. On this occasion, it was successful. A vote was held to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the official population count, and to allow the federal government to make specific laws for indigenous people. More than 90 percent of people voted yes.
The Canberra Times wrote after the event: “If an advanced nation of 11 million people cannot lift up a tiny remnant of 100,000 grossly underprivileged people it cannot claim to be either decent or civilized.”
Fast-forward 55 years and Australia’s indigenous people are still the nation’s poorest and most disadvantaged group. They account for about 3 percent of citizens, yet make up more than 30 percent of the prison population. Four of nine indicators in an annual government survey tracking social and economic well-being have worsened, including children’s schooling and care, and the high rate of suicides.
Albanese’s government has made a raft of other commitments, including a promise to invest in the First Nations’ management of land and water and strengthen economic and job opportunities. Still, it will come down to the Australian people to vote to alleviate a powerlessness the Uluru Statement describes as “torment.”
Back in 1999, not one state or territory had a majority yes vote for the preamble referendum question. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, with a median age of 24, this has meant a literal lifetime of waiting for change for many. If Australia’s indigenous people get a voice in parliament, it would not mean that everyone inside or out of the community would always agree on the best path forward — but it would mean they would get a say.
Appreciating the values, customs and beliefs of all cultures should be a key tenet in politics and in life. Rather than having to bus in to experience it for ourselves, why can we not just listen?
Rebecca Jones is managing editor for Australia and New Zealand at Bloomberg News. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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