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

from Part IV - Institutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2024

Amanda Harris
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Clint Bracknell
Affiliation:
University of Western Australia
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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’.

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Brown, R., Manmurulu, D., Manmurulu, J., O’Keeffe, I. and Singer, R., ‘Maintaining Song Traditions and Languages Together at Warruwi (Western Arnhem Land)’ in Wafer, J. and Turpin, M. (eds.), Recirculating Songs: Revitalising the Singing Practices of Indigenous Australia (Canberra: Asia Pacific Linguistics, 2017).Google Scholar
Harris, A., Representing Australian Aboriginal Music and Dance 1930–1970 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘Mowanjum Festival 2019: Full Event’ [video], directed by Catherine Piota, produced by Pilbara and Kimberley Aboriginal Media, ICTV Play, https://ictv.com.au/video/item/7641, accessed 1 June 2023.Google Scholar
Phipps, P., ‘Indigenous Festivals in Australia: Performing the Postcolonial’, Ethnos, 81(4) (2015).Google Scholar
Slater, L., ‘Sovereign Bodies: Australian Indigenous Cultural Festivals and Flourishing Lifeworlds’ in Bennett, A., Taylor, J. and Woodward, I. (eds.), The Festivalization of Culture (London: Ashgate, 2014).Google Scholar
Treloyn, S. and Goonginda Charles, R., ‘Repatriation and Innovation: The Impact of Archival Recordings on Endangered Dance-Song Traditions and Ethnomusicological Research’ in Barwick, L., Thieberger, N. and Harris, A. (eds.), Research, Records and Responsibility: Ten Years of PARADISEC (Sydney: University of Sydney Press, 2015), 187–205.Google Scholar

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