Standing on the sacred salt flats in Burketown, in remote outback north-west Queensland, Alec Doomadgee is a commanding force.
He speaks to the crowd, a mixture of Indigenous and non-Indigenous locals and tourists, and those who have travelled from overseas to visit the Gulf Frontier Days Festival, which he organises.
They include indigenous Canadians, the Cree people, and New Zealand’s Maori contingency.
Together, they stood as one and delivered what is simply called medicine.
“For the first time in the history, we’re going to hear singing and dancing and songs and language spoken from other Nations around the world — it’s never happened before, so it’s a very special moment,” Mr Doomadgee said.
The Gulf Frontier Days Festival, which ended at the weekend, is a unique event, especially in the remote north-west of Queensland.
To have a reason to come together to celebrate culture, the past, and tell the stories of the present is something everyone appreciates.
However, it is also an opportunity for visitors and tourists to the region to learn about the history of the area.
“For a long, long time the narrative and the story has been coming from our guests and visitors … on how we should be doing things, but we’re telling you ‘No, no, well actually we’ve got medicine for you’, we want to tell you it our way, we want to control the narrative,” Mr Doomadgee said.
For Mr Doomadgee, the real purpose of the field days is medicine.
Medicine for the soul, medicine for the heart, and medicine to help heal from the past and move forward to the future.
The main draw of the festival was the Kabarrijbi Wangkijbi Spectacular — a coming together of native nations, which saw Indigenous Australians from Burketown, Doomadgee, and Mornington Island join together with First Nations peoples from all around the world.
The celebration of dance and music was an incredible sight, and was well attended on the opening night of the event.
“We’re creating a space on the sacred salt flats of the Gangalidda people and they’ve inhabited and lived on this land here for 65,000 years,” Mr Doomadgee said.
Among the entertainment over the four-day line-up was Micki Free — a Grammy Award-winning musician of Native American descent.
He joined the stage alongside Mr Doomadgee and other First Nations people, playing a combination of instruments to the amazement of the crowd.
Mr Doomadgee said the calibre of the artists and performers at the event was truly world-class.
“We’re not perfect — all of us have ying and yang in our life, all of us have colour in our life, there’s black and white, there’s earth and sky, there’s fire and water — it’s just the way it is,” Mr Doomadgee said.
Speaking of the struggles still held between native owners and what Mr Doomadgee calls “our guests and visitors”, he said there had to be a way forward.
However he stressed that acknowledgement of native owners and their traditions and cultures was vital in going forward.
“But it’s that common middle ground that we can find to actually create the change that we need, and if we can’t work with each other … then what hope do we have?” Mr Doomadgee said.
In its third year, the Gulf Frontier Days Festival culminates with a rodeo to end the weekend, something Mr Doomadgee said was fitting.
He said the first jobs many Indigenous Australians ever had were working with pastoral companies as stockmen and women.
Now, he said seeing more and more Aboriginal people take control of companies and running successful cattle operations was “amazing”.
The Gulf Frontier Days Festival is planned to return next year, with the invitation open to anyone to come along to the sacred site and enjoy the history and learnings of native nations.
“It’s certainly a very special place to be part of a ceremony, which we believe is medicine for the people and medicine to help us heal. And not just us as native people, I’m talking white people, I’m talking everybody,” Mr Doomadgee said.
Topics: regional, fine-art-photography, photography, popular-culture, dance-music, dance, indigenous-other-peoples, indigenous-culture, indigenous-music, mount-isa-4825, woorabinda-4713, doomadgee-4830, burketown-4830