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Call for autonomy for Aboriginal community

9 August 2004 - A prominent Northern Territory indigenous leader says ATSIC must be replaced by Aboriginal autonomy.

The chair of the Northern Land Council Galarrwuy Yunupingu has addressed a forum on the future of indigenous affairs at the Garma festival in north east Arnhem Land.

Mr Yunupingu says he is sick and tired of governments using indigenous Australia as a political football.

He says Aborigines should be left to shape their own policies and future.

"I think politicians should pull out completely and mind their own business.

"The politicans should be on the ground with Aboriginal people grassroots in their communities, talking to their leaders as they find them, not making leaders .

"And these tailor-made leaders, I will not wear them," he said.

Yunupingu resigns from Northern Land Council

The Northern Land Council chairman, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, has resigned, saying he wants to concentrate on business interests and his family.

Mr Yunupingu has been a council member for 24 years, most of that time as chairman.

He says it is time for new blood to cope with the changing political scene.

The former Australian of the Year says his biggest frustration has been the lack of commitment from the federal and territory governments.

"They're all the same," he said.

"It's not being fair dinkum about Aboriginal Indigenous services.

"The infrastructure is not in place as policies.

"There're no guidelines for any government in power.

"I think the frustration actually is that we're the secondary people."

He says both the Liberal and Labor parties must change their attitude to Aboriginal issues.

"They pour in so much money into war zones and other indigenous people overseas yet our own Indigenous people suffer and remain the same as we were 100 years ago," he said.

Source: ABC

Mine stand comes full circle

By David Nason

9 August 2004 - Galarrwuy Yunupingu's decision to step down as chairman of the Northern Land Council is an important Aboriginal political milestone, but hardly a surprise.

In recent times, the man dubbed the Black Prince of Arnhem Land has become more and more distracted by troubling local issues, and, like Noel Pearson on Cape York and Peter Yu in the Kimberley, has concentrated his energies at home.

It is now some time since Yunupingu's once compelling voice has been heard in the wider debate on national Aboriginal issues.

But, while the younger Pearson and Yu can be expected to return to the national stage again -sooner rather than later if Mark Latham's Labor wins the federal election - Yunupingu is now 56, and his time for parleying with prime ministers has probably come and gone. Those close to him say the next chapter of Yunupingu's life will focus on two main areas: first, the concern that indigenous young people in Arnhem Land are losing interest in their traditional life and culture, and, second, preparing his people for the coming massive expansion of Alcan's bauxite mining operations on Arnhem Land's Gove Peninsula.

This means Yunupingu's political life, which began in 1972 when he acted as interpreter for his people in their landmark but failed Supreme Court attempt to prevent mining, has come full circle.

Yunupingu's father was a litigant in that 1971 case, which was lost when Justice Richard Blackburn invoked the now discredited notion of terra nullius.

Now, 30 years on, Alcan's proposed expansion of the mine Yunupingu's father did everything he could to stop involves not just a giant increase to the original site but also a pipeline across sacred lands and new infrastructure that could provide as many as 2500 construction jobs.

Yunupingu, who knows the kinds of benefits Aborigines are able to negotiate today, supports the mine expansion, as long as the social and cultural impact of the project can be contained.

Arguably, this represents one of the greatest challenges of his already extraordinary life.

Source: The Australian

'Black Prince' Yunupingu to leave politics

By Ashleigh Wilson

9 August 2004 - One of the nation's most influential Aboriginal leaders, Northern Land Council chairman Galarrwuy Yunupingu, has decided to quit politics.

Mr Yunupingu, 56, a former Australian of the Year, said he was tired of politics and wanted to spend more time with his family, while allowing the next generation of Aboriginal leaders to step forward.

He would not seek another term as NLC chairman at the elections planned for October.

"I'm finished," Mr Yunupingu told The Australian at the Garma Festival in northeast Arnhem Land yesterday.

"I have had my days. I'm running out of energy and I have got to have my family as a priority.

"I am a born leader - no one will take my leadership away from me. But politics is finished. I've had enough of it."

Except for one brief interlude, Mr Yunupingu, sometimes known as the Black Prince of Arnhem Land, has led the powerful NLC since 1980. As chairman, he played a central role in the land rights movement that swept the nation through the 1980s and 90s, and was a key Aboriginal negotiator in the Keating government's historic native title legislation of 1993.

Mr Yunupingu hoped his retirement would allow a new generation of Aboriginal leaders to take his place.

Reflecting on the state of Aboriginal leadership, he said indigenous people should not mourn the demise of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. ATSIC was not properly representative of black Australia, he said, calling on Aborigines to establish leadership structures independent of government.

"Aboriginal people have to do their own leadership work and not with governments," he said. "Hanging around with government or relying on government to create leadership is not a good thing. Governments come and go, and they shouldn't be trusted.

"Aboriginal people should find a national leadership but not where it has to be legislated for. It should be with identified and accepted leaders, and not affected by government."

The Yunupingu family has had a high profile in Aboriginal politics since Mr Yunupingu's father, Mungurrawuy, was one of a group of Arnhem Land elders who sent a bark petition to the federal parliament in the early 1960s opposing a proposed bauxite mine on their land.

A later Supreme Court action against the mine, on grounds that the Aboriginal litigants held native title to the mine site, failed when Justice Richard Blackburn ruled in favour of terra nullius, the doctrine that held Australia was unoccupied at the time of white settlement.

However, terra nullius was later overturned in the High Court's historic Mabo decision of 1992.

Mr Yunupingu has often shared the spotlight with his younger brother Mandawuy, the lead singer of rock band Yothu Yindi. The brothers continue to lead Garma, the annual celebration of Aboriginal culture that finishes today.

Source: The Australian

Survival in song and dance

By Ashleigh Wilson

10 August 2004 - Deep in the stringybark forest, as the sun sets over this remote corner of northeast Arnhem Land, a group of dancers spreads out across a sandy stage. They perform to the sound of clapping sticks and didgeridoo as Galarrwuy Yunupingu, the master of ceremonies and unchallenged local leader, instructs the audience to pay close, respectful attention.

"It is an honour to be able to witness this," he says.

Around him, 100 cameras record the scene. This is Garma after all, the annual celebration of Aboriginal culture, and the crowd, having come from across the world to watch and learn, needs no encouragement.

"Garma is about unity," Yunupingu says. "People living together, sharing their knowledge, sharing as one."

During the weekend, almost 2000 people came together at Gulkula, near the mining town of Nhulunbuy, to experience Garma in its sixth year.

Since its inception, the festival has been an exchange of ideas, a meeting place for the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land and outsiders, and this year is no different. All the elements are there - ceremonial dances at sunset, basket-weaving lessons, Japanese men crowding around yidaki (didgeridoo) guru Djalu Gurruwiwi, daytime forums on music, art and culture - only this time the crowd is bigger.

Faintly familiar celebrities such as musician John Butler and film director Rolf de Heer stand in the lunch queue behind anthropologists, students, lawyers, artists and politicians.

And yesterday, on the final day of Garma 2004, a project almost as ambitious as the festival was launched.

In an attempt to preserve information for future generations, the National Recording Project for Indigenous Music has been created to capture and archive traditional Aboriginal music and dance from communities across Australia. A collaboration between the Yothu Yindi Foundation, the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney, the project's organisers hope to save some of the rare cultural practices that may otherwise be lost over time.

"It's an enormous job and we're not going to have it done tomorrow," one of the co-ordinators, Sydney University music professor Allan Marett, tells The Australian. "We are setting out systematically to record and document what we see as the most important and the most endangered traditions."

Pending approval for funding from the Australian Research Council, the project will start in Arnhem Land next year before spreading out to the rest of Australia. After the first stage, the plan is for other communities to identify their most significant music and dance to be recorded. The project is expected to take about 10 years to complete.

"In the [past] 200 years we have probably lost hundreds if not thousands of musical traditions," Marett says.

Mandawuy Yunupingu, lead singer of Yothu Yindi and one of the drivers of the recording project and Garma, says the work will create a deeper awareness among younger Aborigines about their culture and help spread these traditional songs and dances among the wider Australian community.

"It's going to generate an Australian culture from an indigenous point of view," he says.

"But it's about preserving it, hoping our culture won't die, making sure we have a living culture."

It's no accident that the idea for the recording project was conceived at last year's Garma festival, where the emphasis was also on preserving and sharing knowledge.

At one of the many informal forums during the weekend, Gawirrin Gumana, a celebrated artist from the nearby community of Yirrkala, tries to explain the more traditional method in which a living culture was preserved and passed on. "I got no books, nothing. My book's in here," he says, with a hand on his head.

This year, highlighting concerns about passing on culture to younger generations, Garma has an urgent theme: indigenous livelihoods and leadership. Much of the talk is about the need to find younger leaders, preserving relationships with the land and culture to create opportunities for Aborigines.

The failed experiment of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission is barely mentioned, although the consensus seems to be that leadership has to be generated at a local level, away from state and federal governments.

It is in this context at Garma that Galarrwuy Yunupingu announces he will be standing down from the Northern Land Council and retiring from public life. He says he will continue as a leader in his local community, but the time has come to move on from politics. Even his work at Garma appears to be coming to an end as he urges his audience at a leadership discussion to use the festival to create "our very own Australian pride".

"I have spoken as a leader who planted Garma to where it is now," he says. "Now my energy is running out, which means I am throwing my thoughts to you for help in saying let's create a true centre of Garma knowledge."

Later that day, one of the dances brings a tear to Yunupingu's eye. Nearby, Aboriginal teenagers wearing traditional face paint and Eminem shirts seem just as moved. After the performance, as the crowd leaves for dinner, Yunupingu remains seated at his chair and, in a short interview, says Yolngu culture must be performed, witnessed and recorded to ensure it does not die.

"That's what Garma is about," he says. "It's making sure that the future of Aboriginal existence survives. It's taking care of things. That's why Garma is a teaching venue. That's why Garma calls on other leadership to assist, to carry that responsibility on."

Source: The Australian

Garma Opening

Garma Festival of Traditional Culture website

8 August 2004 - This afternoon the 6th annual Garma Festival was opened by Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Gumatj clan elder and chairman of the Yothu Yindi Foundation.

Welcoming around 800 visitors from around the world and a similar number of Yolngu from across Arnhem Land, told of the age-old links between his Gumatj people and visiting Gupapuyngu families from Ramingining and Milingimbi communities to the west.

It is the first time the families from that clan have visited Garma in large numbers, coming by dirt road and light plane. On behalf of the traditional landowners, the Gumatj and Rirratjingu, he welcomed the Gupapuyngu to Gulkula.

He went on to explain that the Garma connection between the Gumatj and the Gupapuyngu and the site at Gulkula dates back to time immemorial, that their “stories are shared equally and in balance.”

Before the Gupapingu dancers entered the bunggul ground, Galarrwuy said “This is Garma in reality” and asked the audience to “pay attention in reverence and respect.”

Earlier in the day the Gumatj and Gupapuyngu had come together for a ceremony “in mourning and remembrance of their ancestors, their senior men and women who’ve passed away, and in celebration that this generation is meeting here now.”

The Garma Festival launch was attended by official guests NT Administrator Ted Egan, state and federal politicians and senior representatives from Alcan.

Heralded by the haunting call of the Yidaki, scores of Gupapuyngu men in yellow nagas and dozens of women in colourful dresses danced barefoot in the sand, the men brandishing spears, the women branches of gum leaves. The men were painted up in yellow ochre yam designs traditionally associated with the site at Gulkula.

After the first presentation of dancing, Ted Egan gave a brief welcome in Yolngu math and English before the bunggul recommenced in all its vibrant colour and drama.

Bapurru yirripunhamina gathura

Dhawu Gulumbuwungu ga Dhuwarrwarrwungu

Gaathura godarr’ Gupapuyngu Yothu Yindi ga Gumatj yothu yindi gumurr-bunanhamina wangganygu dhiyaku garmawa romgu ga djalkiri nherranmina, bitjan witiyanmina dhipala romlili garma’lili.

Ngaathili ngunhi dhuwala garma ngurru-yirr’yun, baayngu walala Gupapuyngu marrtjinyara raali. Ga dhuwala walala yawungu marrtji, bili dhuwala walalanggu wanggany manikay ga bilma.

Ga marrtjina walala gaathura, ga do’yunmina, nhaanhamina, ngaathinyamina baapurru’- yirripunhamina.

Ngaathil before ngaapaki bunana walalanggu Gumatjku ga Gupapuynguwa wanggany rom, garma, dhapi, ga ngaarra’.

Galarrwuyyu lakarangala dhaawu Ganbulapulawalanguwuy, ngunhi ngayi dhipunguru basenguru wandina bunana Gupapuynguwala, Dhalwanguwala, ga Ritharrnguwala.

Wirrki ngayi Galarrwuyyu maarr-ngamathina balanyarawa romgu bili walala Gupapuyngu yothu yindi marrtjina dhipala ngunhi wanhaka nhanngu yuwalktja Ganbulapulawa waanga.

Source: Garma Festival

National Indigenous Recording Project Launch

Garma Festival of Traditional Culture website

11 August 2004 - The National Indigenous Recording Project was launched today beyond the stringy barks and red bauxite rocks where Mandawuy Yunupingu’s dream began.

Actor Jack Thompson resonated his Garma feeling to those gathered in the open shelter at Gulkula this afternoon. ‘Having this (Garma) move me this way, a lot of it is the magic of the (Yolngu) culture and it is your duty to take this back and let people know that we live here [Australia] as guests of the people who were here before,’ he urged the crowd. ‘At the heart lies a non-spoken language and that is music, it is the commonality.... This universal language is a very important part of our understanding of each other.’

Mandawuy Yunupingu then launched the Project which aims to preserve the music at the core of his culture. This project aims to record and document traditional Indigenous music and ceremony across Australia, while ensuring appropriate cultural access for the people it’s recorded for. Mandawuy addressed the crowd, saying that with every elder that passed, something was lost, and that he hoped to use the Project ‘to make sure the traditions are passed on forever.’

The University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne have collaborated with the Yothu Yindi Foundation to make the Project possible. Alan Marret from Sydney Uni said that the main aims of the project were to maintain law and culture and to breathe a sense of well being into the community. It could also be seen as an invaluable part of Australia’s heritage that had previously been undervalued. It now moves into the first stage of recording with Yolngu people helping record the most important and endangered musical traditions in Arnhem Land.

Mandaway added that the project is still looking for corporate and philanthropic partners to assist with its development and implementation.

Source: Garma Festival

Further information:

• Garma Festival of Traditional Culture
  A unique and special event that is basically a Yolngu ceremony wrapped into a festival which include an academic forum, didgeridu masterclass, eco tourists. This year the forum looks at sustainable futures and caring for country and much more.
• Northern land Council
• Northern Territory Environment Centre
• A healing from the past, for the future
  May 10, 2004 - Tom Murray and Allan Collins have a remarkable story, and they'd prefer to let someone else tell it. It's about a blackfella called Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda from north-east Arnhem Land. In 1933 this Yolngu tribal leader came across a policeman who had broken Aboriginal law by trespassing on Yolngu land. He had also chained up Dhakiyarr's wife. In accordance with black law, Dhakiyarr speared the policeman, Constable Albert McColl, through the leg. McColl died.
  • Dhakiyarr vs the King Study Guide (PDF 240kb)
• Land one piece of the puzzle
  June 3, 2002 - Attending the recent ceremonies for late, great Bunidj elder - the "Kakadu Man" - Big Bill Neidjie, I've been thinking of his legacy, and that of other indigenous heroes who led the hard-won battle for land and native title. Along with Big Bill, other giants of our movement include Eddie Mabo, Vincent Lingiari and my own father, Mungurrawuy Yunupingu.

Further information: native title issues page - includes news index and external links

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