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Garma Festival,
Friday 3 to Tuesday 7 August 2007
[DAY 1] [DAY 2] [DAY 3] [DAY 4] [DAY 5]
Day 2, Saturday 4 August
The Key Forum with its theme Indigenous Health: real solutions for a chronic problem was opened today by Mandawuy Yunupingu, Deputy Chairman of the YYF. Mandawuy said the Garma Festival provided a unique window for learning, "a journey we will embark on into the future".
Forum facilitator, Professor Helen Garnett of Charles Darwin University, said she hoped the recommendations from the forum would progress Indigenous health. She welcomed Indigenous practitioners from Canada, Samoa and New Zealand who had "tackled similar issues".
Other speakers at the opening include Jenny Macklin, federal Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs; Professor Helen Milroy from Perth; Ms Jackie Huggins, co-chair of Reconciliation Australia; and former Federal Court judge Murray Wilcox QC.
Professor Milroy presented a model of health linked to Indigenous images and noted that at the time Europeans landed in Australia, its Indigenous people maintained better health than those in Europe -- a situation that has since been reversed.
Mr Wilcox recalled his decision to grant Noongar People's claim over the Perth metropolitan area last year and noted that there had not yet been a study into the effects of loss of native title, and the psychological and mental health of the people involved.
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