By Dongyun Kwon
The theme of National Reconciliation Week this year is Bridging Now to Next.
Yarra Ranges Council also invited First Nations guests to The Memo, Healesville, to join the national movement to look ahead and continue the push forward as past lessons guide Australians.
The Yarra Ranges National Reconciliation Week event will be held from 10am to 1pm on Tuesday 27 May.
Star Mail interviewed two out of four guests who will share their stories and performances with the audience at the event.
Ash Dargan is a Larrakia musician and storyteller from Darwin, Northern Territory, who is one of Australia’s premier performers and recording artists on the yidaki (didgeridoo).
Professor Richard J Frankland is an elder and Gunditjmara man, whose multi-faceted career spans justice, arts, and advocacy.
Mr Dargon said he’s been playing the yidaki for around 35 years as a storyteller and also in different bands.
“I used to tour with Coloured Stone and have done a lot of different presentations around the country, and I still do,” he said.
“I was also part of a wonderful collection of artists coming along to support Richard Franklin’s album, Discovering Leerpeen Mara, and we’ve done a few concerts together as well. So this is two of the artists from that album performing together again.
“I’m looking forward to this duo, this opportunity to play again together, and to revisit some of those songs which have powerful messages for reconciliation and also for where Australia, as a country, is currently at.”
Prof Frankland said he’s honoured to support the event.
“When you have art, you have voice, and with voice, you have a semblance of freedom, and with freedom comes a responsibility, and so I practice art in that regard, whether it’s in music, film, theatre, spoken word, poetry, or novels,” he said.
“It’s really exciting to be playing with Ash and promoting this album. The songs represent a whole range of things, from veteran suicide to perceptions of culture, exceptions of law, law and lore, and the representative or facilitating the voice of marginalised people, and some of them are just good fun.
“It’s going to be an interesting and fun gig. We’ll be doing two 20-minute sets, and there’ll be a bit of a yarn in between, and I’ll tell a few stories.”
The Larrakia musician has performed at The Memo in 2021 and 2022, however, unfortunately, both of them were live-streamed events where he couldn’t meet the audience due to the Covid pandemic.
“It’s really great that we’re able to have an open concert and a public concert,” Mr Dargan said.
He was a firsthand witness to Corroboree 2000, which brought together Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous leaders in a historic call for reconciliation.
He could never forget that feeling on the day and has tried to recapture that feeling in groups during National Reconciliation Week every year.
“That launch event with so many Australians walking hand in hand together, that’s what reconciliation is. That’s the spirit of it,” he said.
“That spirit has been continuing with us and it does today joined by every conversation we have, every moment that we come together to remember the history of Australia, to tell the truth about it but also to rejoice the fact that we’re a country of togetherness.”
Two more guests for the event were Ziggy Ramo, a rapper, changemaker, award-winning musician, producer of Wik and Solomon Islander heritage, and Courtney Ugle, a VFLW star, proud Noongar woman from Bunbury, Western Australia, who is a leading voice in the fight against domestic violence.
Prof Frankland said while reconciliation is hard work, it also has to be a joy, and that joy can come through breaking bread together, music, having a yarn, and listening to stories.
“For many people, it’s about letting go, but it’s to reconcile a nation and it begins with individuals,” he said.
“One of the ways to do it is to truly acknowledge the past, so that we can grapple with the contemporary happenings, the here and now, so that we can have a united vision for victory for the place where we can all call home.”
The event is free but registration is required.
For more information: yarraranges.vic.gov.au/Experience/Events/Yarra-Ranges-Reconciliation-Week-–-Bridging-Now-to-Next
