Hundreds of school students from remote desert communities in Western Australia have gathered to celebrate Indigenous culture. Giulia Bertolillo reports from Warakurna.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00I'm at what may be one of the most remote school carnivals in Australia, the annual
00:08Desert Dust-Up Festival in Moerakono. More than 200 students from eight surrounding aboriginal
00:15communities have come here for three days of sport, arts and connecting to culture.
00:22They are all from the Nananzara lands, a remote area about the size of the UK. We spoke with
00:28kids from Kiwikata who spent two days on a bus just to get here, and others who are just
00:34really excited about the event.
00:37My name is Adamina and I'm from Blackstone, Babolongwooda community, and it took like
00:43an hour to come here. And it was fun, we saw a lot of camels and sand hills.
00:48And what languages do you speak?
00:51Nganandara and Pitandara and English.
00:56Different aboriginal languages are spoken in this region, but the event is run in English
01:01so everyone can understand.
01:04Students only speak English language and culture when they come to the school, but in their
01:08own communities they're very much in their own cultural spaces and their language, so
01:13students are already multilingual before they come to school.
01:16Catering is a huge job. Schools in Perth made more than a tonne of food for the Nananzara
01:23students. Dust-up is the definite highlight of the school calendar, and students and teachers
01:30have spent weeks preparing. The benefits of this remote carnival will last long after
01:36the buses have made their way along the dusty desert roads back to their communities.