For those uninitiated Boomerang Festival is Northern NSW’s premier global Indigenous arts and culture festival and its bringing the culture to Byron Bay Bluesfest in a big way this year with a massive lineup of talks, workshops, and presentations.
This month, Boomerang Festival will be presented as part of Bluesfest, giving punters a chance to experience some of the best Indigenous artists Australia has to offer.
On the lands of the Arakwal, of the Bundjalung Nation, The Boomerang Precinct will be situated beside the Jambalaya Stage to provide a safe, family-friendly program of arts and age-old culture and rituals.
Born just a few years ago as an initiative between Rhoda Roberts and the Bluefest crew it’s become a much loved cultural event on our festival calendar. We chatted with Bluesfest organiser Peter Noble about the challenges the festival has faced in the past and why it’s so important to Australia’s cultural health that we continue to support our indigenous artists.
One Step Closer To Reconciliation
“Rhoda Roberts and I put on Boomerang around ’12 or ’13 and we realised that one the event just blew people away,”
“Just that thing where the white fellas can hang out with the black fellas, we can all dig each other, get to know each other a it better. You know what that’s called? Reconciliation, and it’s not happening enough”.
There Needs To Be A Refocus On Govt. Funding & Support
“Unless you want to put on an indigenous event in Sydney you can get some money but that defects the whole thing of events occurring in the country. because unfortunately Sydney has wiped out indigenous culture there. ”
People Are Missing Out On An Incredible Cultural Experience
“We did the event [Boomerang] a couple of years back, and what we had was a great event be what we didn’t have was enough people going to it, so we had to find a way to move forward.
[include_post id=”471899”]”What Rhoda did was go to funding bodies and finally get a grant from the Australia Council for an event that had a huge dance component, which is in fact the best part.
“Dance is what really turns the people on. Indigenous people get really competitive about it and people from the Torres Straits Islands, or Arnhem Land or our local Arakwal mob here are all trying to top each other in dance and it’s fantastic.
“Of course there will be music and conferences on top [at Boomerang] but dance is at the centre of it.”
There’s A Political Reason Behind It Too
“I think it’s disappointing that the current government underneath their recently deposed leader moved aboriginal affairs to the office of Prime Minister and gave a lot of people a lot of hope that it would be a main part of this government’s policies.
“We were led to believe that but on the ground it doesn’t seem like much has happened and in fact this current government seems to have pulled back greatly in its grants and in its arts and culture to not only indigenous but to outher cultures and we can’t do that [if we want Australia’s culture to thrive].”
This Is More Important Than Finances
“I get it we [the Government] want to break even on our balance payments and all that but you can’t try and do it overnight, the situation didn’t occur overnight and it doesn’t mean you turn off the tap to every arts and cultural group in this country.
“Because if you do that all you’re going to do is make the arts and culture destitute here and what is a society without that? Imagine if they tried to cut back all that money in sport? What would happen? It wouldn’t play. I think there’s enough Australians that care about our arts and culture that have learnt that under our current government we’ve got to be very, very sceptical about why they’re doing.”
“Yes the arts aren’t for getting rich, want to get rich go and run a business, still the artists need to be supported because what’s a society without it??”
Check out the full lineup for Boomerang Festival here.
