Yaama Ngunna Baaka Corroboree Festival and bus tour
Well-documented corruption on a huge scale has dried out the Murray-Darling river system. Aboriginal communities along the rivers and its tributaries are calling it genocide. From September 28 to October 4, Aboriginal activist Bruce Shillingsworth helped those communities hold the Yaama Ngunna Baaka Corroboree Festival. Green Left Weekly's Mat Ward, who took his nine-year-old son on the second bus, gives a blow-by-blow account of the trip.
Day 1: Sydney to Brewarrina
Bruce Shillingsworth, the Yaama Ngunna Baaka Corroboree Festival tour organiser, said on October 1 that First Nations people need to be given back the power to make key decisions about water flow and the rivers.
More than 200 people are set to tour north-western New South Wales to bear witness to some of the state’s driest rivers and bring back solutions for the water crisis affecting local communities. The tour has been organised by Muruwari and Budjiti man Bruce Shillingsworth who spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Rachel Evans about its purpose and aims.