Yothu Yindi’s co-founder and lead singer Mandawuy Yunupingu rounded off the launch of the Garma Report with two of the song’s from the band’s back catalogue at Parliament House.
It is rare to finish off an event in Parliament House with music, but Yunupingu is one of the organisers of the Garma Festival, the three-day celebration of Yolngu culture and education issues held in August each year on the Gove peninsula.
He sang two of his songs – Freedom and Mainstream – illustrating the concerns of his Yolngu community to be part of the debate about their future.
Charles Darwin University now partners the Yothu Yindi Foundation in organising the educational component of the festival, which this year focused on Indigenous education and training.
CDU’s School for Social and Policy Research prepared a report on the key issues to emerge from the Garma Festival, which was presented to Education Minister Paul Henderson by Vice-Chancellor, Professor Helen Garnett, on Wednesday, December 13.
The report’s recommendations will be drawn on by the Department for Employment, Education and Training as it reworks its strategies to improve the education outcomes of Indigenous communities across the Territory.
An electronic version of the report is available from the Garma website: www.cdu.edu.au/garma.