Garma Festival

Ngatha (food) collecting workshop A 10.00am start - all day
Nanydjaka (Cape Arnhem)
Conducted by Gulumbu, Balanata capacity: 14 people
Ngatha (food) collecting workshop B 10.00 am start - all day at Galuru, also collect shells for necklaces conducted by Banuminy, Gaymala, capacity 18 people

Gara and Galpu djama workshop

Part I 10.00 am start - all day

Spear and spear thrower workshop

Second Creek, also collecting wood for carving conducted by Murphy and Nungki, capacity 8 people

Dhimurru AGM 14.00-16.00 (tbc)

AMSANT Health Summit 14.00-16.00

Garma Bunggul 17.00-19.00

Ceremony

Yolngu Ngatha Supper 19.00-21.00

To complement dinner meals

AMSANT Health Summit program, Wednesday 6 September

8.45am — Housekeeping
AMSANT AGM
Selection of delegates for the People’s Health Assembly
10.15 — Morning Tea
12.30 — lunch
1.45 — resume
Open Forum Afternoon — discussion and panel with visiting scholars from Garma 2000 Festival of Traditional Culture
3.15 — Afternoon Tea
Open Forum continued

The AMSANT (Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory) Health Summit 2000 is being organised in conjunction with Miwatj Health and the Yothu Yindi Foundation and the Garma Festival of Traditional Culture.

Garma gathering of Indigenous Scholars, 6-9 September 2000

The Garma metaphor is used by Yolngu to nurture and guide a process of negotiation, and knowledge generation. People come together in the spirit of goodwill to work intensively on issues of importance, generating new understanding and guiding future action.

This metaphor is well understood by Indigenous communities across Australia, as the process of coming together and negotiating into being new and shared knowledge and understandings has a long tradition in the cultures of the Indigenous nations within Australia. We use the term Garma to name this process in the Yolngu language, but we know the same process is undertaken under different names elsewhere in Australia.

The gathering of Indigenous Scholars at the Garma Festival in September will be an occasion informed and structured by our shared Indigenous metaphor for the facilitation of new ways of thinking about issues of importance. In this instance, the gathering will develop new understandings about Indigenous engagement with the higher education sector of Australia and guidelines for future strategic action.

Our program will cover three days. We have asked Patrick Dodson to facilitate our gathering, with the help of Indigenous scholars we will invite to assist us. After a welcome and introductory commentary from Galarrwuy and Mandawuy Yunupingu, the gathering, guided by the Garma metaphor and with the Garma Centre/AVCC strategy plan as a reference document, will enable people to share experiences, thoughts and ideas about how our Indigenous knowledge, skills and understandings are currently represented in the knowledge corpus represented by university teaching and research. This could be done initially in small groups with opportunities for reporting back to the full gathering at key points in each day. From this discussion the gathering may explore ways by which the principles/values included in the AVCC Working Party Strategy Plan could be translated into future action. The outcomes of this exploration may include new alliances, strategies, projects and protocols.

At the end of each day, with the help of our facilitators, we could crystallise and summarise our discussions to guide the next day's activity. If we conclude about 3.30pm each day, we can then enjoy the cultural program in the late afternoon, leaving the evening meal and beyond for informal discussion.

We will also have the opportunity for a couple of hours to meet with the participants in the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance — Northern Territory (AMSANT) Health Summit, taking place adjacent to the Garma site.

We have invited a group of non-Indigenous academics and educators to our festival. This group includes members of the AVCC Working party, and the Garma Institute Advisory Group. We have organised a separate workshop series for these guests, on issues of the representation of Indigenous knowledge in university curriculum. When appropriate, our non-Indigenous guests will be invited to interact with some sessions of the gathering of Indigenous Scholars.