Reflections from Garma 2024

International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples is celebrated on 9 August each year. Erin Doyle and Ruby Hunt recently attended the 2024 Garma Festival and reflect on their experience and the lessons learnt at this four-day gathering in remote northeast Arnhem Land.

The Garma Festival is Australia’s largest Indigenous gathering, a four-day celebration of Yolngu life and culture held in remote northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Hosted by the Yothu Yindi Foundation, Garma showcases traditional miny’tji (art), manikay (song), bunggul (dance) and storytelling, at the Gulkala ceremonial site. The festival was established to preserve and celebrate Yolngu culture, as well as creating a space for cultural exchange and understanding. This is where the name of the festival came from, as the word 'Garma' is a Yolngu matha term for ‘two-way learning process’.

Garma 2024 was the first festival to be held after the referendum and its devastating outcome for those who voted ‘Yes’. This year’s theme was 'fire, strength, renewal'. Like the themes we saw for NAIDOC Week (keep the fire burning) and Reconciliation Week (now more than ever), there was a focus on the resilience of First Nations people and the continued need to fight for their voice to be heard. Djawa Yunupingu, the Chairman of the Yothu Yindi Foundation, addressed the festival on Saturday afternoon and drew heavily on this year’s theme. The 'No' result was devastating for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across Australia, and it began a period of mourning or 'burning' as Djawa referenced. However, from fire comes new growth. Djawa noted we need to wait for the inevitable rain to come, which will bring through a new generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders to take up the fight.

Djawa also asked us to continue to 'walk together' – a very gracious ask, given the dark history that has flowed from colonisation. Similarly gracious was the request of a Voice to Parliament. However, the Voice was only one of three pillars of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, along with truth-telling processes, or Makarrata – a coming together after a struggle – and the end goal of a treaty. At Garma, it remained unclear whether a Makarrata Commission or treaty is on the table anymore, other than those already existing at state levels. Djawa shared he doesn’t think he’ll see a treaty in his lifetime.

In a session that discussed the contemporary interpretation of traditional practices, the moderator, Professor Wesley Enoch AM from the Australia Council for the Arts, raised the notion that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and art is often only seen by some through a narrow lens of how it was perceived by settlers during early colonisation: as if the culture is some ‘anthropological museum’. Carmen Glynn Braun, a First Nations artist stemming from the Kaytetye, Anmatyerr and Arrernte Nations, said, like every other culture in the world, Aboriginal culture and artistic expressions have evolved.  Accordingly, people in the wider community need to allow First Nations people to determine and express their own unique contemporary identities, not the other way around. It was reminiscent of the work our Community Fund charity partner, the Aurora Education Foundation, does in supporting Indigenous excellence, and particularly through their RISE program, which allows First Nations students to determine what success looks like for them as individuals. We’re very excited to announce we will be partnering again with Aurora Education Foundation in FY25 through our Community Fund. These partnerships are ways in which Hall & Wilcox can continue to support reconciliation.

Being immersed in Yolngu culture at Garma for four days was truly profound. At 5.30 am, the Yolngu women allowed us to experience a Milkarri Dawn Crying Ceremony, a sacred women-only practice. The Aboriginal Elders cried out in song for their land and their people, an emotional sound embodying both grief and joy at the same time. The Elders sang and cried together in the bush, the sounds echoing across the vast bushland, while the first glimpse of sunlight rays tinged the eastern sky red. As if choreographed, mother nature in turn responded to the Elders’ voices, with gusts of wind spontaneously rustling through the gum trees, specks of rain beginning to fall, and a cacophony of bird sounds calling out in response. This is just one example of many where we were able to witness the immense spiritual connection Aboriginal people have with their land and nature. Yolngu Elder, Djapirri Munungirritj, told us to 'take what you feel here into your heart, and let it come out in your words and actions'. 

As Hall & Wilcox looks at drafting the next iteration of our Reconciliation Action Plan, we look forward to sharing our experience at Garma to guide and influence that process. We can learn so much from the oldest continuous living culture in the world, and it’s important to us that we show up in these spaces and keep listening. There’s a profound importance to listening and learning on country, because it’s in this environment where we, as gracious invitees, can immerse ourselves and hear first-hand what we can do as a law firm to continue to progress reconciliation in Australia.