Garma - The Significance of Others Forms of Education
Monday, June 25, 2007 at 01:37PM Karl McPhee, film-maker and CSTC member recently returned from Northern Arnhem Land far north Queensland, one of the remotest areas in Australia where he was involved in making a documentary on "Garma".
The Garma Festival is a celebration of the Yolngu cultural inheritance. Yolngu culture in north-east Arnhem Land — a heartland of Aboriginal culture and land rights — is among the oldest living cultures on earth, stretching back more than 40,000 years.The Garma ceremony is aimed at sharing knowledge and culture, and opening people’s hearts to the message of the land at Gulkula. The site at Gulkula has profound meaning for Yolngu. Set in a stringybark forest with views to the Gulf of Carpentaria, Gulkula is where the ancestor Ganbulabula brought the yidaki (didjeridu) into being among the Gumatj people. The festival is designed to encourage the practice, preservation and maintenance of traditional dance (bunggul), song (manikay), art and ceremony on Yolngu lands in Northeast Arnhem Land.
Garma implies many things for Yolngu, as a practice and as a place. Garma happens when people with different ideas and values come together and negotiate knowledge in a respectful learning environment. The Garma Festival at Gulkula creates this kind of environment for Yolngu (Aboriginal people of northeast Arnhem Land) and Balanda (Non-Indigenous Australians).
The traditional models of Yolngu commerce have been eroded over the last century. The Yothu Yindi Foundation was established in 1990 by elders from five of the Yolngu clans, the Gumatj, Rirratjingu, Djapu, Galpu and Wangurri clans to address this issue.
The Yothu Yindi Foundation saw a need to create a new model that served both the requirements of traditional communities and western financial markets and institutions. The Foundation recognises that organisations that ask questions like “What can we do today to make sure our kids will be productive 20 years from now?” will be best equipped to create businesses that are sustainable from a community and environmental perspective and boost the spirit of the community.
The Garma Festival is the centre piece of this plan is a unique cultural experience. It encapsulates the very essence of how creative skills development might be applied in a contemporary context.
Listen to Manuwuy Yununpingu, a board member of the Yothu Yindi Foundation talk about Yolngu culture.
To obtain a full copy of the documentaryfilm, contact Karl McPhee at mcpheeprod@mpx.com.au
Reader Comments (1)