Dupang Festival: Healing the Land & Healing Our Spirits

First published by www.polisplan.com.au on 26 February 2018

It was more than 20 years ago that Major Lancelot Sumner — known affectionately as Uncle Moogy — voiced his dream to host a festival on Country. The Country, on which his ancestors the Ngarrindjeri people lived, fished, danced and told stories for thousands of years. Finally his dream has come true and we are here to share it with him. It feels like an amazing privilege. Uncle Moogy has opened up his land and invited the public to camp for 3 days at Long Point, a beautiful waterfront location on the Coorong — at the mouth of the Murray River. The Dupang Festival was part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival and brought together aboriginal dancers from all over Australia for three days of performance and workshops.

We spent our days immersed in a variety of cultural practices that ranged from tasting bush tucker, face painting, basket weaving and woodcarving. The event culminated in a ceremonial corroboree with songs and dances that lifted our spirits. We sat under a roaring fire under the stars of the Milky Way and listened to Uncle Moogy share some of his dreaming stories, transporting us back in time. This would have been how young people learnt their cultural stories and were taught to be custodians of the land. He explains that each Nation had their own creation stories that connected them to their place and that the stories told around the fire were life lessons. There was no disconnect between spiritual practice and life in Aboriginal culture. School was not only practical it was also a lot of fun!

The festival was as much about sharing culture and healing the land as it was about healing the spirit. Waking up to stunning sunrises and breathing in clean fresh air in a location where there was no TV reception or Wi-Fi was healing enough. But there was more. At sunrise, we would gather around the fire to learn about the practice of Wayepa from Jamie — a Gunnnai man visiting from Melbourne. Wayapa is based on ancient Indigenous knowledge and wisdom that focuses on taking care of the Earth as the starting point for healing ourselves. It is a narrative meditation to slow us right down to sit in the stillness of nature.

I believe that for us to reconcile with the First Australians, we must first reconcile with the land. Festivals such as Dupang are a wonderful opportunity for us to truly appreciate this rich culture and what it can teach us. Colonisation resulted in Aboriginal people being stripped from their traditions, torn apart from their families and forced to abandon their languages & sacred ceremonies. Thankfully, people like Uncle Moogy and Jamie are ensuring that oldest continuous cultures on earth will continue to survive and to be passed down to the next generation. They are also committed to sharing it with other Australians and people around the world. I strongly feel that reconnecting with the Earth and with each other could solve many of the problems we face in society today.

If only we could tear ourselves from the cities for long enough to discover this.