The Voice is gone. But from Garma, another optimistic and graceful invitation

August 8, 2026 — 5:00am

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The Garma Festival, famously, is the biggest Indigenous gathering in Australia. Its distinctive features include the ochre earth of Arnhem Land and the oratory of politicians, black and white.

There’s communal dance and communal dunny blocks, hints of corporate sponsorship and wisps of eucalyptus smoke from 100 campfires. Garma is the workshop for much of the Indigenous policy agenda.

If this year’s crowd of a couple of thousand tent-dwelling festivalgoers expected to hear a long lament for the failure of the Voice referendum, or a denunciation of Pauline Hanson’s rise, or loud complaints about Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s absence, they would have been disappointed.

Instead of self-pity there was talk of self-actualisation. There were demands for change, but not for charity. Most striking of all, the focus was not on the past but the future.

The leading elder of the Gumatj clan, hosts of the Garma Festival for its 26 years, is Djawa Yunupingu. “Like my ancestors, my mind is on the future,” he said in his only speech of the festival, held last weekend.

“Future partnerships, future success, future prosperity, future wealth for Yolngu and the whole nation.” The Yolngu is a tribe of 13 clans, about 7000 people altogether, which includes the Gumatj clan’s 1000 or so. They each speak a different dialect but also share a common tongue.

It’s not that there isn’t disappointment and disadvantage in these remote communities. But the Yolngu have set their attitude very deliberately. Denise Bowden is the chief executive of the Yothu Yindi Foundation, a not-for-profit that supports the Garma Festival among other endeavours. She put it plainly.

“We must remember our past, but we must not be defined by our past,” the Northern Territory Indigenous woman told the gathering.

“We must not be defined by the events of 200 years ago or 50 years ago, and we must refuse to be defined by the event that took place on 14 October 2023, the referendum.

“To believe in a future that is better than the past – that is the vision of the founders of Garma,” she said. The founders were two late........

© The Sydney Morning Herald