21 - Festivals as a Forum for Indigenous Public Ceremony from Remote Australia

Summary

Festivals are one of the main contemporary forums in which Indigenous Australian public ceremony is staged, learned, shared and increasingly, revived. In this chapter we review the literature on public ceremony at Indigenous festivals, focusing on Junba at the Mowanjum festival in the Kimberley and Kun-borrk/Manyardi at the Stone Country and Mahbilil festivals in western Arnhem Land/Kakadu. We consider festivals as serving several purposes: Firstly, as a forum for cultural revival, reclamation, and maintenance, supporting language and song revival and reclamation work by local individuals, groups and Indigenous businesses. Secondly, as a forum for education and diplomacy, serving as powerful statements of Indigenous sovereignty, identity, law and diplomacy which educate the broader public. Thirdly, as a site for continuity and innovation of practice. We examine how performers in the Kimberley use Junba to transform society to address inequity and discrimination in wider Australian society, and performers in western Arnhem Land use Kun-borrk/Manyardi at festivals to support interdependence and reciprocity enacted as part of regional ceremonial practices and ideologies of being ‘different together’.