Ni! Bilyada Waanginy Listen! The Rivers are Speaking & Meeka Moorart Full Moon Celebration

Join us with your camp chair and picnic at Gurndandulup / Matilda Bay for the first full-moon of Djilba. This is an Aboriginal-led cultural experience with original puppetry and the singing of a new moon song. (We will share a recording of the song so you can also sing along wherever you'll be.) 

Last year, in the season of Makuru, the Danjoo Koorliny Walking Together Social Impact Festival visited Gurndandulup to watch the full moon rise, and to begin learning a moon song. This year, we will return to Gurndandulup at the beginning of the season of Djilba. 

For 2020, the leaders of Danjoo Koorliny have recorded the Meeka Moorart Full Moon song with Noongar singers including Noel Nannup, Richard Walley, Farley Garlett, Josie Hansen, Carol Innes, Ezra Jacobs-Smith, Elisha Jacobs-Smith and Kobi Morrison, along with John Butler, Iain Grandige and Zal Kanga-Parabia (this song will be made available once it is ready) and others. They have also invited Karen Hethey and Zoe Street to work with other artists on a COVID-sized version of a long-term puppetry project called Ni! Bilyada Waanginy - Listen! The Rivers are Speaking which will also be shared during the Meeka Moorart Full Moon Celebration. (This event will be co-presented by Propel Youth Arts and UWA Music.)

Ni! Bilyada Waanginy - Listen! The Rivers are Speaking project begins in 2020 and, like the Derbarl Yerrigan / Swan River, will move through Whadjuk boodja /country, including Perth’s urban landscape, to reveal and share stories from the waters and this land through culture, ecology, art and experience as we walk together towards 2029 (200 years of colonisation in Perth) and beyond. At the heart of the project is the understanding that Noongar people are the custodians and guardians of boodja. Their stories, embedded in this land and gathered over tens of thousands of years, hold deep ecological understanding and wisdom that gives knowledge and guidance for looking after and caring for all living things in our unique landscapes we call home. Learning and creating through song, dance, visual arts and puppetry, each year the Ni! Bilyada Waanginy project will culminate in a cultural experience for the Meeka Moorart Full Moon Celebration as part of the Danjoo Koorliny Walking Together Social Impact Festival. (This year will be a smaller-scale experience because of the COVID-affected lead-up.)

The foundation of the project rests on six Noongar principles of responsibility for caring for everything:

• Wirin - the spirit, the life force that is in everything
• Boodja - the land/country
• Koort - the heart
• Moort - family and community
• Koolunga - the children and the legacy we leave them
• Kaartdijin - knowledge
  

This event forms part of the Danjoo Koorliny Walking Together project - an initiative designed and led by Aboriginal leaders to help us all walk together as Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people towards 2029 (200 years of colonisation in Perth) and beyond. 

The leaders of Danjoo Koorliny Walking Together are Dr Noel Nannup OAM, Dr Richard Walley OAM, Professor Emeritus Colleen Hayward AM and Carol Innes. Last year they hosted - with support from the Centre for Social Impact at UWA - the inaugural Danjoo Koorliny Walking Together Social Impact Festival. 

All social distancing measures apply.

Event Co-Producers: Propel Youth Arts and UWA Music
Danjoo Koorliny & Festival Partner: Commonland
Community Partners: Cultural Corridors Inc, Reconciliation WA, Western Australian Aboriginal Leadership Institute