Hi-tech means to honour ancestors
KOWANYAMA will come to life for a week-long festival in celebration of the remote community’s ancestors and their children.
The inaugural arts festival, Ngethn o’ will be held from July 1, and feature a series of film nights, contemporary arts and traditional craft exhibitions, dance, community art workshops and other activities.
Festival director Vivian Sinamon said organisers were planning to maximise opportunities for the participation of youth in the community, with an emphasis on the use of new media to reach the world.
He said even though Kowanyama was a remote indigenous community, they would not be stopped from reaching out and connecting.
“Ngethn o’ will be a local community event that with the use of digital media will have a global reach,” he said.
“The Kowanyama Project website ‘Woven Tracks’ is being developed to gather all of our activities into one place.
“The page will be where anyone can follow the development of the festival, schedules of activities and see news events of the festival itself.”
Woven Tracks content creator Mark Weaver said it was going to be a powerful event.
“The name Woven Tracks has several layers of meaning but importantly is a reference to the exchange of media assets through cloud-based technology,” he said. “The tracks are the audio and video tracks in the edit program.
Mr Weaver said Ngethn o’ and the technology behind it was a progression of Kowanyama’s key principle of the transmission of cultural knowledge of its ancestors and their children.
“These are the founding principles that have led to Kowanyama’s campaign to establish the Kowanyama Culture and Research Centre and a proposal to develop a future state-of-the-art centre to house our museum collection,” he said.