Yesterday I attended Yabun 2009. Yabun is held on Australia Day, or what most people there were calling Survival Day, to celebrate Indigenous cultures. I think the name Survival Day is a great name and it was a wonderful, wonderful day. After spending the previous evening reading some disgustingly racist comments by people on Facebook it was probably the only way I would have been able to get into Australia Day at all. And it all came as a complete suprise to me. I love days that you are not expecting much of but turn out to be great. Only problem is that you don’t think to tell anyone else about it.

Back to Yabun, it was held at Victoria Park, just down the road from us. It opened up with some traditional dancing and smoking and of course a recognition of the Gadigal people on whose land we were gathered. Then Martin and I went off to hear a panel discuss indigenous singing/songwriting. This panel included none other than Kev Carmody. It was very interesting and there were only about 30 people there so intimate too. What I mainly got out of it was how most of them just wanted to be recognised as artists in their genre ie conutry or acoustic or rap rather than as indigenous. Many of them wanted to write about political issues and thought that important but they also wanted to be able to write about love or nature without feeling like it was unnecessary.

After that we sat on the grass and listened to some different artists play and had some lunch. I ate Turkish food to celebrate Australia’s multiculturalism (and because I really like it). We listened to some people reflect on the apology and where to from here and then more music, Kev included.

After the festival we went to the Frenchs to celebrate Jo’s birthday and farewell her. That was a bit sad for me, very sad actually but it was a great to spend the night with her and some other lovelies. We had a BBQ which I suppose was fitting.

So yay for Survival Day.