Garma Festival

Despite that introduction, I am here today not with my musician’s hat on, but as Deputy Chairman of the Yothu Yindi Foundation, which I will tell you a bit about in a minute, and I want to talk today about two things specifically – the Garma Festival, which the Foundation puts on – probably Australia’s biggest annual indigenous cultural event, held each year, in August, in north-east Arnhem Land, and, very closely connected to that, the issue of the need for authenticity and cultural integrity in indigenous tourism projects, and specifically, at festivals – the need for it culturally and morally, but also the need, certainly in our case for it commercially, if we are to establish festivals such as Garma and related activities as serious and sustainable indigenous tourism destinations

First, Garma. (video)

Garma is the flagship, if you like, of the Yothu Yindi Foundation, which I started in 1990, with other Yolngu community leaders and leaders of five clan groups in north-east Arnhem Land.

It is a charitable institution, with tax exemption and gift deductibility status.

One of its key objectives is to help build the development, teaching and the enterprise potential of Yolngu cultural life.

We are working to further economic, employment and training opportunities for Yolngu,
And also, importantly, to encourage the practice, preservation and maintenance of traditional culture.

And we want to further the sharing of knowledge and culture, especially between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, fostering, through that, greater understanding between them.

So we started Garma five years ago to do all that :

- to create opportunities for indigenous Australians, and to create an environment to celebrate and share the art, songs, dances and associated ceremony that form the core of Yolngu and other indigenous cultures in Australia.

It is through all that art, song, dance and ceremony that we sustain our culture.
So Garma features a lot of culture, a lot of art, a lot of performance, in a bush setting, and with a lot of fun.

It is, as a journalist in “The Australian” once described it, a festival with a deeper purpose.
And it has grown and grown in all aspects – including the cost!

Last year, we had 1500 people there – half of them Yolngu and other indigenous Australians, and half of them non-indigenous Australians and international visitors.

nearly all there to participate in the workshops, the classes, the forums, the Ceremonies.
It is a pretty unique event, with a lot of exclusivity about it.

And with the current level of infrastructure at the site , even with us bringing in what we can, helped by Alcan , a major sponsor, and with our other resource and financial constraints, we can’t really get any more people on the site which, by the way, is on Aboriginal land, (so visitors need a permit to enter the land).

To help achieve those aims I have spelled out above , we have a big range of activities and features. This year, at Garma 2004, we will have:

the Garma Cultural Studies Forum – the theme is Indigenous Livelihoods ( which include tourism)– and a Leadership Forum
Staging of major ceremonies (bunggul) by clans of the region
Music and recording workshops
Yidaki masterclasses
Arts projects, including exhibitions
Men’s and Women’s programs of art and craft workshops
Student programs
Volunteer programs
Lots of other ceremony, dance and music performances

AND – a tourism program

You can see that the roots of the Garma Festival, now a high-profile, in-demand event, are in culture, and furthering opportunities for Yolngu. They are not in tourism.

But it is a unique experience, a unique gathering.

And many visitors, as Steve Leibmann said while doing his live broadcasts for the Today Show from there last year, feel it is a “privilege” to be at Garma.

Because it is real. Authentic.

It would all be happening anyway, even if we didn’t have any tourism visitors.

And that gives those visitors a real sense of being involved, being part of and experiencing a rare privilege, seeing and learning and sharing this knowledge and culture.

As one of our local Land management rangers, also a guide, said at Garma 2002: ‘We’ve got 40,000 years experience doing all this, visitors can learn a fair bit here”.

That’s a fair bit of corporate knowledge, as businessmen call it.

Last year, we ran a tourism pilot project, with World Expeditions, in which we had about 35 people come in and experience the four days of Garma, and, effectively, join the Garma team.

It was a major success. That success, and the major national TV coverage of Garma last year, brought on a lot of demand this year from tourists wanting to come.

So we started discussing the wisdom, or need, for an expanded tourism attendance at the Festival – and our case has, I think, implications for other festivals.

We did not want to lose the cultural essence, integrity and authenticity – and prime purpose - of the Festival

Would we do that by having lots more tourists ? Would we have to change the festival ?
And would we then lose what the tourists had come to experience – a unique, authentic insight and involvement in indigenous culture ?

That would be similar to wrecking something like the Barrier Reef by too much tourism and bad practices, and in doing that wrecking the product….and the tourism industry.

Of course, we do need to have Garma paying its way, raising enough funds to put itself on and achieve our aims and the tourism element helps that.

Well, the answer to those questions is: we reckon we can have a lot more tourists, and we can keep the cultural integrity and authenticity of a Festival like Garma intact when you do have a lot more tourists.

In fact, we reckon the two are, in our case at least, inter-dependent.

Such an event – a tourism project - needs the cultural integrity, the authenticity, the real thing, the true insight.

It is a key selling point, a key difference between us and a lot of other stuff going on. And this goes for many indigenous tourism projects, including festivals with indigenous elements.

For us, it is not just the special site, and circumstances, but what happens there and the way we do it.

So you can afford to have cultural integrity and authenticity in the tourism product you are offering– in fact, in our case, we can’t afford not to !

And if it is to be true indigenous tourism, then we have to maintain the unique situation and features we have, and the cultural integrity.

For Festivals to play a proper role in indigenous tourism, the indigenous element of them ( for us, the whole thing) must have cultural integrity and provide a real, authentic, rare experience for the tourist. That way it serves all purposes.

I will let you into a secret – we were calling the pilot project an eco-tourism project. But not any more.

Sure, it has a major ecological element, but it has an indigenous core. And if it were to lose that, calling it “indigenous tourism” would be like calling something “eco-tourism” even though you didn’t even go outside !

So we are looking, this year, at having perhaps about 100 tourists coming in, after going through the necessary registration and permit processes with us. (www.garma.telstra.com).

And we are looking at other ways of allowing visitors to come up there, and for us to share the knowledge and culture with them, giving them a rare experience and helping us achieve our aims.

We have already had eight Yolngu go through a formal tour guide training program to help this along, and help them along, of course. They are some of the 70 Yolngu who work at Garma.
We did an economic and social impact study after Garma 2003, showing the festival is worth millions to the NT economy,

And with the support of the Northern Territory Government, we have formally begun to join, in timing and a marketing sense, Garma, and the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, and the Darwin Festival, every August (Garma is August 6-9 this year),

– to maximise the tourism potential, particularly with inter-state and international visitors.
Garma is so important to the Territory now, we are working with the Government to maximise its support for us.

So now you know what Garma is, what it is for, and why we go out each year and frantically search for the assistance of corporate and government partners to allow us to put Garma on and, if we get the infrastructure, even expand it.

But not too much !

And not change it .

It has to be a financial success, so we can achieve those aims I talked about before. And tourism – real indigenous tourism at the Festival – is part of that.

But to do that it also has to be the real thing.

It has real purpose - and it is real indigenous tourism !

Thank you.