Clapsticks and Karaoke: The Melting Pot of Indigenous Identity

Abstract

In recent decades, a mixed-style dance festival has been held at camping grounds near the town of Laura on Cape York Peninsula, including contemporary forms of music and dance. The Laura Festival has its roots in the funding of Aboriginal dance festivals in the 1970s across northern Australia with the aim of fostering the sharing, recovery and maintenance of Aboriginal traditional dance forms. The range of cultural forms at the Festival clearly reflects a broad expression of Indigenous identity, from the classic traditional styles to creative forms that explore symbols and motifs, to modern cultural forms that adapt western forms with an Indigenous style. Questions the authors reflected on at the Festival were: “Where is God in the Laura Festival?” and “What does the Festival say about Aboriginal spirituality in general and Aboriginal Christian spirituality in particular?” In answer to these questions we felt that the Creator was very much present in the vitality and creativity of the Festival and in the shaping of new expressions of Indigenous identity in the modern world. Further, the Festival affirmed that there is a foundational place for Aboriginal spirituality in the formation of Aboriginal Christian identity and spiritualities through a combination of traditional spiritual foundations linking people to creation, culture and to the Creator known through Christ, and a creative shaping of contemporary expressions of belief and practice.