Aboriginal dance festival a chance to connect
Updated
Every two years, the tiny Australian town of Laura, on south-eastern Cape York, hosts one of the country's oldest and biggest Aboriginal dance festivals.
Hundreds of singers and dancers travel from across the state to take part in the three-day event.
It's an important chance for indigenous communities to share their stories and culture.
Presenter: Siobhan Barry
Speaker: Jeremy Geia, festival director; Damien Watson, dance leader; Julia Smith, singer
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BARRY: This year, five hundred dancers from about 20 communities travelled to Laura from as far away as Brisbane and Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria for the town's 18th dance festival.
Thousands of festival-goers also attended... but director Jeremy Geia says it's not about attracting big crowds.
He says the event celebrates the role dance plays in indigenous peoples' lives.
GEIA: It's our fingerprint, you know what I mean, it's our identity, and with that identity , you can go places, it's like a passport if you like, and that gives us opportunities, that gives us a bit of, ah, standing in the world.
BARRY: It's also about sharing stories and culture.
Damien Watson brought his dance group up from Woorabinda in central Queensland.
WATSON: It's very important for us as aboriginal people to come together and to show one another our ways of living and our culture - sharing our culture, and that it's still strong today. You know, although some of our language have been taken away from us, but our song and dance is still with us.
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BARRY: The mostly young group performs a dance about the stolen generations.
Damien Watson says it's an important story to tell.
WATSON: That's how our old people expressed their stories and their feelings through song and dance because they didn't know how to speak out about what was going on through their lives and that.
BARRY: And is it an important part of the healing process?
Yes, it's an important part of our healing too, for our aboriginal people too, to get over that and to face the future.
(singing)
BARRY: At 22, Julia Smith from Yarrabah, just east of Cairns is one of the youngest singers in her dance troupe.
She says she's loved performing at Laura for the first time.
SMITH: It's a good experience for the younger generation. And also just to keep our elderly people happy and enjoying life, and this is where we come in as young people, showing our old people that we still got our culture living strong.
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