Garma Festival

The Garma Festival, one of Australia’s major cultural exchange events and now a model for authentic, insightful Indigenous tourism, has won a major international tourism accolade – a Skål International Ecotourism Award.

Mandawuy Yunupingu, the deputy Chairman of the Yothu Yindi Foundation , organiser of Garma, said today he was very proud the annual festival had won the 2005 Skål award, in the “Educational Programmes – media” category. “Given that ‘Garma’ is a Yolngu (Indigenous people of north-east Arnhem Land) word meaning ‘two-way learning process’, this is great recognition of the Foundation’s efforts in achieving its aims”, he said.

“It is recognition that you can have a major tourism event, bringing together Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and international visitors, for real cultural interaction, and achieving real social, cultural and economic outcomes,” he said. Garma has a five-day line-up of entertainment, education and real cultural interaction, providing a unique cultural tourism and learning experience

The Yothu Yindi Foundation is a not-for-profit Aboriginal organisation with charitable status. All attendance fees and other revenues received for Garma go to the operation of the Foundation’s projects, including Garma, to achieve three primary aims: development of economic opportunities for Yolngu through education, training, employment and enterprise development; sharing knowledge and culture; and nurturing and maintaining Yolngu cultural traditions and practices.

Mandawuy Yunupingu said the Foundation would like to pay tribute to and thank its Principal Partners: Alcan; the Christensen Fund; the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts; and the Northern Territory Government; and the Foundation’s other sponsors and supporters.

More than a thousand Yolngu, and a similar number of Indigenous and non-Indigenous visitors, including the general travelling public, come to Garma, which is held each August, on Aboriginal land at Gulkula, near Nhulunbuy, in north-east Arnhem Land.

It is also the venue for one of the country’s leading forums on Indigenous issues. The eighth Garma festival, with “Indigenous Education and Training” as the theme of its Key Forum, bringing together Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, including community, corporate and government leaders, and students and educators, will be held on August 4-8, 2006.

The Skål award was announced in Zagreb, Croatia, today. Skål is the largest organisation of travel and tourism professionals in the world, with 22,000 members operating in 87 countries.

For more details of Skål, go to www.skal.org