Land, song, constitution: exploring expressions of ancestral agency, intercultural diplomacy and family legacy in the music of Yothu Yindi with Mandawuy Yunupiŋu

Yothu Yindi stands as one of Australia’s most celebrated popular bands, and in the early 1990s became renowned worldwide for its innovative blend of rock and indigenous performance traditions. The band’s lead singer and composer, Mandawuy Yunupiŋu, was one of the first university-trained Yolŋu educators from remote Arnhem Land, and an influential exponent of bicultural education within local indigenous schools. This article draws on my comprehensive interview with Yunupiŋu for an opening keynote address to the Music and Social Justice Conference in Sydney on 28 September 2005. It offers new insights into the traditional values and local history of intercultural relations on the Gove Peninsula that shaped his outlook as a Yolŋu educator, and simultaneously informed his work through Yothu Yindi as an ambassador for indigenous cultural survival in Australia. It also demonstrates how Mandawuy’s personal history and his call for a constitutional treaty with indigenous Australians are further grounded in the inter-generational struggle for justice over the mining of their hereditary lands. The article’s ultimate goal is to identify traditional Yolŋu meanings in Yothu Yindi’s repertoire, and in doing so, generate new understanding of Yunupiŋu’s agency as a prominent intermediary of contemporary Yolŋu culture and intercultural politics.