Bangarra endorses The Voice
Indigenous dance company and one of Australia’s leading arts organisations, Bangarra Dance Theatre, this morning released a statement in which they wholeheartedly back an affirmative vote in the upcoming referendum on Constitutional Recognition of Australia’s First Peoples.
Their statement in full is reproduced below.
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STATEMENT ON THE NATIONAL REFERENDUM FOR THE CONSTITUTIONAL RECOGNITION OF AUSTRALIA’S FIRST PEOPLES
For over three decades, Bangarra Dance Theatre has been privileged to be entrusted with sharing the powerful voices of the world’s oldest living Cultures – the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultures of this nation.
The stories we tell have awakened a national consciousness to the deep scars of our colonial history, and the legacy of unseen trauma left in its wake. We attend to this knowing that by carrying Story, we also carry a responsibility to give insight into our experiences, promote understanding, and effect change. But is this enough?
Like our artform, truth telling has the profound ability to set a course of action that emboldens and steers us towards a future that otherwise lay unimagined – until now.
Bangarra Dance Theatre fully supports voting ‘Yes’ in the national referendum for the Constitutional Recognition of Australia’s First Peoples. By supporting the vote for ‘Yes’, we not only pay respect to the truth of the past, we state our vision for our future as a nation that values equity and fairness and acknowledges the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
We encourage everyone to inform themselves, listen with an open mind, and trust that they are participating in a process that gave us the Uluru Statement from the Heart – a process that has been collaborative, careful and intensely thorough. We also recognise and respect the importance of empowering our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and storytellers to define and communicate their individual views on this issue.
We hope for a peaceful and constructive process towards change, and that the resilience and courage that has underscored the survival of our First Nation Peoples inspires all Australians to step forward and walk together in the spirit of truth, reconciliation, and equality for all.
