Garma Festival

The Yothu Yindi Foundation has announced that the theme for the Key Forum at the 2007 Garma Festival of Traditional Culture will be Indigenous health: real solutions for a chronic problem.

The Key Forum – a central element of Garma – is co-ordinated by Charles Darwin University and is now established as a pre-eminent national gathering of community, corporate and governmental leaders and decision-makers, and educators and practitioners in a particular field.

Board Member of the Yothu Yindi Foundation and Reconciliation Australia, Raymattja Marika, says the 2007 Forum will focus on a particular set of Indigenous health issues and topics, centred on:

Traditional healing
Maternal/child health services (two-way)
Relationships to make things work – social determinants in public health
Infectious disease control that makes a real difference
Health advice/education: effective ways of getting the messages across

And we are determined it will make a real and on-going difference. We want the maximum possible practical results from it, and we will also be following up on the outcomes to maintain the momentum”, she said.

“Education and health are two of the central challenges facing Australia in regard to its Indigenous population, so it is particularly apt that Indigenous health: real solutions for a chronic problem is the 2007 Forum theme, following on from “Indigenous Education and Training” in 2006.

“And we will be working even harder in 2007, particularly after Garma, to try to make sure that a set of concrete, practical policies and actions come out of Garma, with everyone involved taking on specific roles and responsibilities to address this extremely important issue.

“At the Foundation, we are walking the walk, not just talking the talk, in developing community leaders, in sharing and protecting culture and knowledge, in bringing Australians together and in creating economic opportunities and real outcomes”, she said.

Raymattja Marika was speaking at Parliament House in Darwin, during the launch of the Garma 2006 Forum Report on “Indigenous Education and Training”.

The 2007 Key Forum will run for three days from August 4 to August 6, 2007, at the Garma Festival site at Gulkula, near Nhulunbuy in north-east Arnhem Land. Garma will run from August 3 to August 7, and those people registered for the Key Forum are welcome to attend for all five days of the Festival.