From afar you might assume that the most significant moment of this year’s Barunga festival was the “historic agreement” signed by the Northern Territory government last Friday, to negotiate a treaty with the NT’s four land councils.

This year’s festival is, after all, taglined “Treaty!” and marks the 30th anniversary of the Barunga Statement – a list of Aboriginal rights written on bark and presented to Prime Minister Bob Hawke in 1988. Hawke responded by promising a treaty but as foretold by Yolngu band Yothu Yindi, “promises can disappear/just like writing in the sand”.

The re-emergence of treaty talks three decades on is described as “stepping from muddy waters onto a rock” by John Christophersen, the deputy chair of the Northern Land Council. “You’re not going to lose 230 years of colonisation [with a treaty]; you’re going to gain 65,000 years for the basis of this nation,” he tells the festival’s official opening, to murmurs of agreement from the crowd.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten speaks too, but many people are elsewhere. Peak heat is partially responsible (the space beneath the shade cloths is full), as is the fact that many have driven from places as distant as Ntaria (Hermannsburg), Numbulwar and Yirrkala not to watch speeches, but to cheer on family members in furiously fought sporting matches, or to perform bunggul (traditional dance). There’s also a sense that “words are easy, words are cheap” (Yothu Yindi again), with many land council members wearing T-shirts all weekend that read “30 years of broken promises”.

But even had Friday’s treaty announcement not transpired, the festival still would have overflowed with significance. Held on the country of the Bagala clan of the Jawoyn people, a remote community of 350 which opens itself up to more than 3000 guests, who camp in what’s essentially their bushland back yards, Barunga is aimed squarely at its primary audience of Indigenous Australians. It’s a festival that generates its own news agenda, anchored to an unwavering program of sport, music and culture.

Held on the country of the Bagala clan of the Jawoyn people, a remote community of 350 opens itself up to more than 3000 guests. Photograph: Barunga festival

This year especially is buoyed by a stream of meaningful moments. On Sunday, legendary Galiwin’ku act Saltwater Band delivers a series of Dr G Yunupingu songs into the starry night with a kind of operatic beauty and tragedy. Dr G was from Galiwin’ku too, a Yolgnu community on Elcho Island, and was once in Saltwater Band.

“Dr G played Barunga many times and he gave you the performance of your life,” says his niece, Jennifer, before we stand for a minute’s silence. The silence is broken by Dr G’s voice, soundtracking a dance in his honour by members of the Gumatj clan, including his daughter Jasmine Yunupingu. Unlike the bunggul, which is narrated in English, the meaning of Dr G’s dance is discernible only to those here to whom it matters most. For the rest, bearing witness is enough.

Directly after, the MC Laurie May asks a lost kid to come backstage. “Your parents are looking for you,” she says. It’s typical of a festival utterly lacking in stage-managed veneer. The microphone is used to rustle up missing band members, too, and to scold stage invaders. “You kids, don’t jump up here with all these wires!” says exasperated MC and community leader, Suzina McDonald. Later she warns, “I can speak many languages” and when kids keep shimmying up, she unloads in three rapid-fire languages in a row.

After a morning gig on the river stage, with people splashing and swimming nearby, the eight women of Maningrida band, Ripple Effect, tell us which languages they speak, some of them up to seven. “And English!” the crowd adds to the tally, visibly impressed. Sydney producer, Papertoy (Bevis Masson-Leach) plays Ripple Effect a remix of their song Nguddja for the first time and looks thrilled when they say it’s deadly. The bass, says singer Patricia Gibson, “sounds like the wind that brings the old people”. Quizzical faces force her to explain further. “Our ancestors’ spirits are still here, they can talk and walk past us.”

The listening session was the idea of Michael Hohnen of Skinnyfish Music, the Darwin label that produces the Barunga Festival in partnership with a local committee. “There’s no tokenism to any of the cultural stuff here,” says Hohnen. “Jamie Ahfat, who does the didge workshops, that’s not for show. He does it anyway, he just does it publicly at the festival.”

Ahfat is MC-ing the yidaki (didgeridoo) and spear-throwing competitions. “Weavers, you women up the back there with medicine, warning, spears are coming,” he says, as kids start aiming at the target: an Australian coat of arms. “We don’t know what these kids are capable of,” he adds. Everyone laughs.

The children of several NT musical legends step into the spotlight at Barunga this year and, in that, you feel both the pain and promise of elders passing on and generations turning full circle.

Many acts and dances featured proud traditional dress. Photograph: Barunga festival

The Elcho Island Youth Band features the sons of Saltwater Band, whose lead singer Manuel Dhurrkay introduces them. “It’s their first time here from Galiwin’ku,” he says. “They’re a bit nervous.” One guitarist looks to be about ten years old and the lead singer, Brando Yunupingu (son of Saltwater Band’s Jonathon Yunupingu) sings with one hand in his pocket. His nonchalance belies a powerful voice, however, and his band’s bush-reggae-ska version of Dr G favourite, Baru, sees a haze of dust rise beneath dancing feet.

Tjupi Band, meanwhile, is lead by guitarist Jason Butcher, son of Warumpi Band’s Sammy Butcher. Mid-way through a set that wins Tjupi Band the Best Community Band award, three guest singers come out to perform Warumpi Band classics My Island Home and Blackfella/Whitefella. One singer is Shellie Morris, who I find sitting in the shade of the Top End Aboriginal Bush Broadcasting Association van the next day. She explains that one of the guest singers was Layilayi Burarrwanga, the brother of Warumpi Band’s late lead singer, G. R Burarrwanga.

“They called me from Papunya and asked if I wanted to sing My Island Home with [G. R’s] brother, who sounds exactly like him. [G. R] took me under his wing when I started out doing music. I didn’t have any language then, I was adopted ... there were many reasons it was an honour to sing with his brother.

“Other years they’ve brought in John Butler or Missy Higgins,” Morris continues. “This year it’s incredibly important because it’s all Indigenous artists headlining, playing the main stage. It’s a blackout. It’s really hard to get gigs in remote communities, you’re so far away. So this is their opportunity to shine, share their songs and be supported by their own people.”

Helping to write a setlist by Morris’s side is Dhapanbal Yunupingu, daughter of Yothu Yindi frontman, Dr M Yunupingu. She’s just driven 900 kilometres from Yirrkala where a commemoration plaque for her father was unveiled. That night, full of quiet charisma, she sings a new song, Kakadu, soon to be released on her debut EP. Morris accompanies her with a band she gathered “bush way” (on the fly).

The main stage is all Indigenous, yes, but not all Australian - a festival first. When Tiwi Island RnB act B2M toured Taiwan in 2016, they got “very homesick”, band leader Jeffrey ‘Yellow’ Simon tells the crowd. “When we met the Bunun and Amis tribes we felt at home and we knew we had to do something with them.”

Standing in proud traditional dress, their faces beatific, the Bunun children’s choir is a delight to behold. Their harmonies with the B2M vocalists are peaceful and sublime and when it’s over too soon you want to hear it again – lying down. “We are Indigenous people of Australia, these are Indigenous people of Taiwan,” says Simon. “Pretty much the same.”