Home News In photographs: Garma Festival 2024

In photographs: Garma Festival 2024

By AG STAFF • 6 August 2024

Image credit: Nina Franova/Yothu Yindi Foundation

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From 2 to 5 August, Garma Festival 2024 was hosted at the Gulkula ceremonial site in the Northern Territory in remote northeast Arnhem Land to celebrate and recognise Yolŋu life and culture.

Garma Festival – Australia’s largest Indigenous gathering – has just wrapped up for 2024 after a four-day celebration of Yolŋu life and culture.

Hosted by the Yothu Yindi Foundation, the festival showcases traditional miny’tji (art), manikay (song), bunggul (dance) and storytelling. It is also an important meeting point for the regions’ clans and families.

This year, the festival’s theme was ‘fire, strength, renewal’ – a response to the rejection of the Voice by the Australian people on 14 October 2023, says Yothu Yindi Foundation Chairman, Djawa Yunupiŋu.

“Gurtha (Fire) is at the centre of the Yolŋu world; it is the foundation of life that gives strength, energy, and power. Gurtha is in the people and is of the land. Worrk (Renewal) is in the life of the land and the people. It is the goodness that rises in the country after fire has burnt the land and cleansing rains have come.”

Garma Festival also plays host to the Key Forum policy conference, which has become Australia’s premier platform for the discussion and debate of issues affecting Indigenous people. Although the conference agenda changes each year to reflect the Garma theme, topics such as land rights, health, education, economic development and government funding are regularly discussed.

(Clockwise from top left) The theme for this year’s Garma was ‘Gurtha-Wuma Worrk-gu’ – Fire, Strength and Renewal – which focused on the next generation of young Yolŋu. Image credits : Leicolhn McKellar/Yothu Yindi Foundation; Garma is an important meeting place for the families of Arnhem Land, drawing in clans from across the region. Image credit: Nina Franova/Yothu Yindi Foundation; All aboard: Garma road trip 2024. Image credit: Teagan Glenane/Yothu Yindi Foundation; Malati Yunupingu from the Diamond Dogs band – music has been a mainstay of Garma since its inception. Image credit: Teagan Glenane/Yothu Yindi Foundation; The Gumatj clan are the Traditional Owners of the Gulkula site where Garma is held. Image credit: Peter Eve/Yothu Yindi Foundation; Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is escorted to the dance grounds by Gumatj leader Djawa Yunupingu and Red Flag dancers during the opening ceremony. It was the first Garma Festival since the failed referendum on a First Nations Voice to Parliament. Image credit: Melanie Faith Dove/Yothu Yindi Foundation

Bunggul

The call of the yidaki (didgeridoo), the rhythm of the bilma (clapsticks) ring out and the voices of the Yolŋu song-men rang out across the Festival site each sunset, summoning all to the dance grounds. Here, the people of the different clan groups took turns performing traditional dances, sharing stories and songlines that stretch back millennia.

The ancient ceremonial grounds at Gulkula are where stories enshrined in the land, the sea and sky are brought to life through dance and song. Image credit: Nina Franova/Yothu Yindi Foundation
For many Yolŋu children, their first steps are taken on the bunggul grounds. As Gumatj bunggul leader Balupalu Yunupingu explains: “The dance is very, very important to kids when they are learning. It is your background that you are starting to learn. Every child has to learn from the beginning.” Image credit: Melanie Faith Dove/Yothu Yindi Foundation
A dancer from Wadeye, a remote community 400 kilometres south-west of Darwin. Image credit: Leicolhn McKellar/Yothu Yindi Foundation
The songlines have been passed down for millennia; they are Yolŋu legal rites and a celebration of connection to country. Image credit: Nina Franova/Yothu Yindi Foundation
Garma’s over-riding cultural mission is to provide a contemporary environment for the expression and presentation of traditional Yolŋu knowledge systems and customs, ensuring these practices continue to be passed down from one generation to the next. Image credit: Nina Franova/Yothu Yindi Foundation

Around the grounds

Throughout the festival, attendees engaged in traditional Yolŋu experiences such as fireside chats, poetry readings, astronomy tours, and women’s healing sessions. Works from local and regional galleries were exhibited among a grove of stringy-bark trees in the open-air Gapan Gallery. Each night, as the sun went down over Gulkula, a cinema under the stars presented a series of films produced by First Nations people from Arnhem Land, Australia and the world.

The Gapan Gallery draws on natural elements to create a stunning outdoor art gallery set within a grove of stringybark trees. Gapan (natural white clay) is used to paint the trees which make up the walls of the gallery, pristine white sand underfoot acts as the floor, and a canopy of stars above provides the ceiling on this unique exhibition space. Image credit: Jeanie Govan/Yothu Yindi Foundation
Garma is held at Gulkula, a significant ceremonial site in northeast Arnhem Land once described by the late Mungurrawuy Yunupingu as “an all-encompassing philosophical, physical, cosmological, theoretical place” where Yolngu “have danced from the beginning”. Image credit: Peter Eve/Yothu Yindi Foundation
The ‘Bitja Wanga’ Garma Cinema showcases First Nations films from across Australia and overseas. Image credit: Jeanie Govan/Yothu Yindi Foundation
Inspired by the likes of KISS and Status Quo, the Mulga Bore Hard Rock band had the Garma crowd on their feet; the six-piece band of teenage brothers and cousins are from the remote central desert community of Akaye, two hours northeast of Alice Springs. Image credit: Michael Jalaru Torres/Yothu Yindi Foundation

Cultural workshops

A chance to practice different aspects of Yolŋu life, cultural workshops are hosted by senior Yolŋu knowledge-holders throughout the festival to teach skills such as weaving, spear-making and learning on country during a bush walk, as well as language and kinship lessons and Yidaki classes.

A painter demonstrates the exquisite technique and distinctive linework that makes Yolŋu art so widely admired throughout the world. Image credit: Leicolhn McKellar/Yothu Yindi Foundation
Red Flag dancers performing bunggul (ceremonial dance) – undoubtedly one of the highlights of the Garma experience. Image credit: Melanie Faith Dove/Yothu Yindi Foundation
A young boy plays the Yidaki, an instrument central to Yolŋu dance, ceremony and song. Image credit: Teagan Glenane/Yothu Yindi Foundation
Female guests at Garma can experience traditional healthcare and bush medicine provided by senior Yolŋu ladies in the ‘Dilthan Yolngunha’ Women’s Healing space. Image credit: Jeanie Govan/Yothu Yindi Foundation