Books
Reflections and Voices: Exploring the music of Yothu Yindi with Mandawuy Yunupiŋu
with contributions by Marcia Langton, Allan Marett, Melinda Sawers, Mandawuy Yunupiŋu and Galarrwuy Yunupiŋu, The Indigenous Music of Australia Book 1, Sydney University Press, 2009
Abstract
In the early 1990s, the Australian band Yothu Yindi rose to national prominence with hit songs like ‘Treaty’ and ‘Djäpana’ that would become part of Australia’s cultural fabric. With its distinctive blend of global popular styles and rare Indigenous traditions from remote Arnhem Land, international acclaim soon followed, as did a swathe of industry awards and the naming of band’s main singer and songwriter, Mandawuy Yunupiŋu, as Australian of the Year for 1992. Yothu Yindi stood as an icon of the Aboriginal Reconciliation movement at a time when in Australia’s legal and political institutions were willing to recognise their past injustices against Indigenous Australians and their continuing native title over the lands they still inhabited. But how well do we know Yothu Yindi and its songs? Or the culture, history and politics of the remote tropical region in Australia’s Northern Territory that shaped its musicians and their music?
In this book, Aaron Corn takes readers on a captivating journey with Mandawuy Yunupiŋu through the ideas and events behind some of Yothu Yindi’s best remembered songs. Together they locate the band within a continuum of traditional practice that records the beauty of Arnhem Land as experienced by Mandawuy’s ancestors, and has guided local engagements with visitors from across the Arafura Sea for countless centuries. They reveal how Mandawuy’s work as an educator and musician championed the continuing importance of traditional Indigenous thought and practice to contemporary life in Australia. And through Yothu Yindi, inspired an entire generation to rethink Australia’s relationships with its First Peoples and to dream of a brighter day. A brighter day when a Treaty with Indigenous Australians will make all the waters one.
Ngukurr crying: Male youth in a remote Indigenous community
Southeast Arnhem Land Collaborative Research Project Working Paper No. 2, 2001
Extract
Rather than determining the education and employment needs of youths upon premises grounded in universalist assumptions of their benefits, government agencies should move further in taking direction from remote indigenous communities in offering local programmes pertinent to their situation and aspirations. Communities need to take more steps to enfranchise youths as partners in such processes. As evidenced among male youths in Ngukurr, where localised options for schooling and work yield little satisfaction, activities in sport and music possess no shortage of enthusiastic young adherents. This indicates that the young are amenable to dedicated and sustained work under the direction of mature men when both the benefits for them and the validation they receive in return are apparent.
Eventually, it is from the current generation of young males that Ngukurr’s future leaders will be drawn and, for this reason alone, the community has much to gain from investing heavily in their development now. For this to occur, community concerns should develop as a frank discussion of the prevalent models for socialisation among mature males that local youths are most likely to inherit. It is further recommended that they be translated into steps toward dedicated youth programmes that will facilitate paraprofessional training for locals already engaged in youth work, monitoring and intervention protocols for youth at risk, and general enrichment for males no longer at school who nonetheless require pragmatic mentoring and for whom most opportunities taken for granted by fellow Australians are beyond their means.
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