Mitch Tambo And Brooke Boney's 'Yaama' Moment Is A Nod To Power Of Language In Reconciliation
While the country is still self-isolating in various respects, musician Mitch Tambo says National Reconciliation Week (NRW) mustn’t be forgotten, and its theme ‘In This Together’ is more relevant than ever as we remain physically apart.
Starting on Wednesday May 27, NRW will mark 20 years since 250,000 Australians walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and bridges in other cities around the country, to ‘bridge the gap’ between Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians.
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As a First Nations artist, Mitch said traditional language and music help bridge the years of dispossession of land and culture.
“I think when we look at the power of language and moving forward, it’s just incredible because it wasn’t that long ago we couldn’t speak our language or practise our culture,” Mitch told HuffPost Australia.
Under various government protection policies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 in NSW, Indigenous Australians were prohibited from speaking language on Aboriginal reserves and missions.
In 2017 NSW passed legislation, the Aboriginal Languages Bill, to preserve Aboriginal language. At the time, NSW Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Sarah Mitchell, said in parliament, “People were arrested for daring to speak their language in public, and children were removed because their parents or grandparents were heard uttering their language”.
For a musician...
