My reflection from Garma, Australia’s largest Indigenous cultural gathering

It was my privilege and joy to be invited to attend Garma, Australia’s largest Indigenous cultural gathering, as one of ten EY delegates. I had been following EY’s involvement since our first delegation attended three years ago and was keen to learn more. My own lived experience of Aboriginal Australia is very white-Anglo middle class. Like many of us, I learned bits and pieces of Aboriginal history as a footnote to some other parts of school curriculum, and I realise now mostly through the lens of non-Indigenous authors and historians. With the benefit of hindsight, I understand I was blessed to have had a heart to heart chat with William Rickets, in his sanctuary in the Dandenong Ranges, when I was 9 years old. I was lucky enough to have William Rickets’ explain to me his view that all Australians should adopt Aboriginal philosophies, respecting the spirituality in all things in the natural world.  But of course, that was just a glancing insight into the richness of the history that was all around me, and of which I knew so very little. Interwoven with that formal education was my family’s own storytelling, which included tales of the talent and skill of Aboriginal stockmen on the land that my family claimed in WA, in the little town of Kojonup, not far from Katanning. Of course, those stories were very much conveyed through the eyes of the dispossessors, and not the dispossessed. Since then, my work with many government agencies, both Federal and State, has given me much greater contextual understanding of the challenges and inequalities between indigenous Australia and the rest of the country. These are often presented as ingrained and intractable wicked problems, that even vast amounts of government expenditure can’t adequately address. 

To be honest, I attended Garma expecting that I would learn more, that would give further evidence, to these views of complexity. Instead, what I learned was that views of complication and intractability are pretty much one sided. 

What I gathered, was a deeper understanding of what it means when your lived experience is that your lore, law, language, and even existence is challenged, and you are defined in a Constitution and Law that’s not of your making and bears no resemblance to your self-identity. I was challenged to think about how a person becomes an alien, without leaving home, and how that sense of alienation is enshrined in a Constitution that is written in a foreign language and defined in a foreign law. 

I came to better understand that we are on the cusp of an important decision about the country we want to be in the future, and that a shared view of a future that we can all be proud of demands that we all bring curiosity, acceptance, responsibility and desire for what is fair and just and right for all of us. Equity means that we all get to choose and live our own futures.

To look ahead and find a way forward is what brings people to Garma. Djawa Yunupingu, a Yothu Yindi Board Member, delivered an address on the second day of Garma that called for the Constitution to be translated into local languages, and for our nation’s leaders to engage meaningfully with traditional leaders to “Work together to make words that are sharp and good.” His ask was that all Australians support the task in a proper and respectful way, that is guided by the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

The challenge to all of us is big, but not beyond us, and sharing the vision from his father, Djawa Yunupingu he asked us to remember that: “The red kangaroo is your ancestor, too. The night bird is calling to you, as well, from the river of stars, and the constellations of the universe. Where the gurrikal (kookaburra) flies in the wind, it is speaking to your heart as well as ours, where the feet that find the sand are your feet as well as ours. “

No white Australians or Western heroes are currently in Songlines, the cultural underpinnings of all aboriginal clans. We do not belong: we have taken what was not offered and are part of a history that is hurtful and sad. This historical division is not the way to a shared future. We are now at a juncture where we have the opportunity to accept what was, and to be responsible for our part in doing the work so that we are all part of an Australian future that is equal and just. Let’s really and truly work together at all levels to create a future that is worthy of us all. It’s simple.