Political leaders have been warned their attendance at one of Australia’s largest cultural festivals is not enough to make progress for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Speaking at the annual Garma Festival at Gulkula, in northeast Arnhem Land, to a crowd that included several senior ministers and the prime minister, Yothu Yindi Foundation chief executive Denise Bowden said their presence was a powerful signal.
“But don’t leave Garma and leave things on endless repeat,” she said.
“Don’t be here to think your attendance here is enough.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used his time at Garma to announce an economic partnership with Indigenous organisations, which he said built on Closing the Gap commitments and would empower communities to advocate for infrastructure on their lands.
In her powerful address to the festival on Saturday, Ms Bowden told the crowd that despite the success of Garma, now in its 25th year, visitors would be leaving behind a “world that remains in crisis mode”.
“On Tuesday, we will return to a life dominated by the simple fact that Aboriginal people in remote areas of Australia remain the most marginalised people in the country, if not the world,” she said.
Ms Bowden highlighted high rates of rheumatic heart disease in Arnhem Land, saying the community of Maningrida, in the Northern Territory, has the highest rate of the condition in the world.
She also pointed to the over-representation of First Nations people in custody to bring home her point, with the NT second only to El Salvador when it comes to incarceration rates.
“We’ve become numb to this data and immune to the horrors that lie in the statistics,” she said.
Ms Bowden said the status quo was not acceptable, with recent Closing the Gap statistics showing four targets going backwards – adult incarceration, children in out-of-home care, suicide rates and child development.
She said the Yothu Yindi Foundation had long argued the Closing the Gap data reflected a fundamental failure in Australia’s governance systems, and that must change to make a real difference.
“There are good intentions and what is described as hard work, but without crunching systemic change, there will be no betterment,” she said.
“People suffer because of these failures of governance that are imposed upon us.”
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