Segui le orme che portano alle ceneri del focolare. Il Festival Culturale Gattjirrk di Milingimbi

Abstract

This article considers the socio-cultural meaning of the Gattjirk Cultural Festival of Milingimbi, an event that is annually held in the indigenous Yolngu community in the Northern Territory, Australia. Despite its small-scale dimensions and ludic nature, the Festival provides an arena where the postcolonial realities the Yolngu people live in are negotiated. Focusing not only on the organisers' point of view - who see the Festival as an opportunity to "share culture" - but also on that of the youth - who reveal their experiences and visions through hip-hop and comic dances - I argue that the Festival creates a space in which both generational tensions, within the community, and those between Indigenous and non indigenous people, can be displayed and mediated. If, on the one hand, the Festival is a moment of encounter where culture can be shared, on the other it also generates new modalities of confrontation and defiance. By weaving together elements of Yolngu cultural heritage and pop culture, I argue that hip-hop and comic dances, which are mainly performed by the youth, are tactics of cultural remix that demand attention through laughter and irony: a mutual recognition which equally engages performers and spectators, the elders and the youth, indigenous and non indigenous people to participate and respond. These performances thus generate connections and relationships that remix the old and the new, the elders and the youth, indigenous and non indigenous people in an encounter which is at once efficacious yet ephemeral.

Keywords

• Indigenous cultural festivals
• hip-hop dances
• Northeast Arnhem Land
• performative tactics
• cultural remix
• sharing culture