Renown throughout the region for its sport and music competitions and promotion of healthy living messages, as well the celebration and practice of cultural performance, arts & crafts, bush foods and story-telling.  The Festival is also used to promote messages ranging from anti-substance abuse to road safety.

The Barunga Festival has been seen as an important landmark in Aboriginal affairs in the Northern Territory, and has regularly hosted and welcomed local and national politicians.  This year, for example, will see the 20th anniversary of an historic visit by former Labor Prime Minister, Bob Hawke.

In 1988 a group of men gathered together to address issues of Aboriginal culture and politics.  Among the leaders present were Galarrwuy Yunupingu, then chairman of the Northern Land Council, Bangardi Lee, Wenton Rubuntja (who passed away in 2005), his opposite number in the Central Land Council, Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Gerry Hand.

On June 12th 1988, the same year that Australia was celebrating 200 years of colonisation, the Barunga Statement was presented to Prime Minister Hawke at the Festival.  

The Barunga Statement calls for Aboriginal self-management, a national system of land rights, compensation for loss of lands, respect for Aboriginal identity, an end to discrimination and the granting of full civil, economic, social and cultural rights for Indigenous Australians. 

The Barunga Statement itself was the product of several years of negotiations between Galarrwuy and other Aboriginal leaders across Australia.  Taking inspiration from the Yirrkala Bark Petition created 20 years earlier, the Statement took the form of a typed set of demands surrounded by painted designs and affixed to a large piece of hardboard. 

The Barunga Statement painting combined several clan designs from Yolngu country in northeastern Arnhem Land on the left with a large design featuring traditional Central Desert iconography on the right.  As such it visually affirmed the unified demands of the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory and the Land Councils that represented the interests of those who had already attained the first measure of self-management promised by the Land Rights Act (NT) 1976.

The Barunga Statement was signed by several representatives present.   Although Mr Hawke signed the Barunga Statement telling the gathering he would organise a treaty between black and white Australians by 1990, it was not a legally binding agreement. 

There is a sad irony to that fact once again, as happened with the Yirrkala Bark Petition, the concepts of the white man’s law were used to invalidate the demands that black man’s law be honored in Australia.  It is sadder still in that one of the points in the Statement calls for a ‘justice system which recognises our customary law’.

In 1991, in his last act as Prime Minister, Mr Hawke shed a tear as he hung the Barunga Statement in Parliament House, saying he wished he could have done more for Indigenous Australians (he never delivered on the promised treaty). 

Back to Top