Warning: this article contains the names of Aboriginal people who have died, following cultural protocols.
Garma, the annual festival and celebration of Yolŋu life and culture, is marking 25 years in 2025.
The festival, hosted by the Yothu Yindi Foundation at Gulkala in northeast Arnhem Land, is a four-day event, beginning this Friday, August 1.
Garma showcases traditional miny’tji (art), manikay (song), bunggul (dance) and story-telling, and is an important meeting point for the clans and families of the region.
It has also, over its 25 years, become an important forum for political discussion, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy and other federal and NT politicians slated to speak, along with prominent First Nations people, including Yothu Yindi chairman Dhawa Yunupingu, Warlpiri Elder Ned Nampijinpa Hargraves and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Katie Kiss.
The Festival’s over-riding cultural mission is to provide a contemporary environment for the expression and presentation of traditional Yolŋu knowledge systems and customs, and to share these practices in an authentic Yolngu setting.
The 2025 theme for Garma is ‘Rom ga Waŋa Wataŋu’, ‘The Law of the Land, Standing Firm’ in one of the local Aboriginal languages, Yolŋu Matha.
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Garma Festival 2024 S2024 Ep4
The first Garma
Garma Festival was a creation of late Yolngu brothers and leaders of the Gumatji clan Dr Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Dr M Yunupingu, the frontman of Yothu Yindi.
Dr Galarrwuy Yunupingu passed away in April 2023 after a long battle with illness.
He dedicated his life to the land rights movement and the self-determination of his people.
Dr Galarrwuy Yunupingu's final court case, a successful High Court challenge that bears his name, was handed down on March 12 and confirmed that native title is a property right and, like any other property right, if it is taken away by the Commonwealth then the native title holders are entitled to compensation on just terms.
Garma, itself, is a Yolngu Matha term for "two-way learning process".
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Garma Festival 2017
Dr Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Dr M Yunupingu led the first Garma Festival in 1999, a small gathering intended to gather Yolngu to talk about self-determination, well-being and health.
It was hosted by the Yothu Yindi Foundation, which was established almost a decade earlier to represent the five regional clans in Arnhem Land: the Gumatj, Rirratingu, Djapu, Galpu and Wangurri.
The significance of Gulkula
The very first Garma was hosted at the Gulkula site on Gumatj Country, a tradition that has remained.
Gulkula site is a significant place of ceremony for Gumatji, and a meeting place for the five clans.
Yolngu history describes how people have danced at the ceremonial grounds 'from the beginning'.
The late Gumatj leader Muŋurrawuy Yunupiŋu described Gulkula as “an all-encompassing philosophical, cosmological, theoretical place”.
Gulkula is home to a stringybark forest that looks out over the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Some of the forest was bulldozed in 1964 by the Department of Works for the Gove Down Range and Guidance Telemetry Station.
The station tracked the path of rockets launched from Woomera in South Australia.
At the time, there was no Native Title legislation so Yolngu were not consulted or able to fight the development.
In 2017, the Northern Land Council (NLC) approved a lease over Gumatji land near Gulkula for the operation of a sub-orbital rocket launch facility.
Garma 2025
Yothu Yindi chair Djawa Yunupingu said Garma's foundation had come from the disappointment his late brothers and other Yolngu leaders had felt following Prime Minister Bob Hawke's broken promise of a Treaty.
"In our law, words of promise are sacred, so from that disappointment, my brothers wanted to start something new and make a new pathway," he said.
"When we look back, we remember the recent passing of our former Chairman, and so many other family members including my other brother, who co-founded Garma. We lost another brother this year, and other close family members, who we love very much.
"You will feel some of this grief in the air at Garma this year as Yolŋu people face up to the loss of special people who leave us too young and too often.
"But we always keep our thoughts on the future, with our eyes on the horizon.
"Looking for the goodness of the future, working towards that Australian dream – of a latju (good, beautiful) life, in a latju country, Australia."
Forum events will include a panel session on 'From the bush and for the bush'; the Mining Life Cycle – from Exploration to Closure: a case study in the life of a mine on Aboriginal land; universal voices with representatives from the Navajo, Comanche, Kiowa, Sioux, Pueblo and Lakota nations from North America and a round-table discussion about Indigenous media hosted by NITV's John Paul Janke.
The festival this year will also include an education fair, with more than 150 young people from local schools and the Garma Youth Forum gathering for a unique curriculum that is quintessentially of the region.
