The theme was truth telling. I am still digesting, there is much more to know and understand, but these are some of the things I learned: 1. The myriad, varying, magnificent, in many ways mysterious Indigenous cultures in Australia should be a source of immense pride to us as the Maori culture is in New Zealand; this atavistic wisdom connects us to our land in ways we still barely fathom, and has done for what scientists estimate might be as long as 65,000 years. The languages should be preserved before they are lost. Gumatj women perform a smoking ceremony at the Youth Forum during the Garma Festival. Credit:AAP 2. The matriarchs in Indigenous clans like the Yolngu are fierce, formidable bearers of knowledge and power. The senior men support them in this role. They carry themselves with authority, and this authority is recognised, and passed from mother to daughter.

3. Indigenous Australians must have a central place in the heart of our body politic, our parliaments, our national identity, our collective soul. Not peripheral. 4. The decision of the elders, in the Uluru Statement of the Heart, to seek a “Makarrata” – a coming together after a struggle – was an act of remarkable generosity. After colonisation, brutal massacres we prefer not to talk about, racism and rebuffs and deafness, they still invite us to walk with them, to understand better, which also is an act of grace. Loading 5. Every Australian child should know the history and present of the clans of the land they live on. We should signpost clan-land and massacre sites and not allow shallow politicking to distract from the facts of history. 6. Aboriginal people have been telling us for decades to listen to country. At a time when we are addicted to screens, we filter our own faces in selfies, dump plastic filth in oceans, when we work out on machines and talk to robots, when we wonder why there is so much anxiety and depression can there be any more potent call than to slow, forget ourselves, sit under trees and stars and listen to country and to those who own it?

7. The women elders must be heard, leaders like Marcia Langton and Andrea Mason, Sally Scales and Merrki Ganambarr-Stubbs. For decades male Indigenous leaders have dominated and the women pushed to the background, as the redoubtable Professor Langton has written about recently, and women are rising up to ask that the plague of domestic violence be stamped out. Gaps can’t be closed without this occurring. Women are worshipped as creators on Yolgnu land, and walk with the dignity of queens, women who’ve earned respect. 8. Politicians have repeatedly failed Indigenous Australians, rejected their requests, refused to listen, diminished their agency. Successive governments have stripped them of autonomy, dignity and control. The rejection of the Uluru Statement last year continued this. So, as was the case with marriage equality, it is now time for the broader public, for all of us, to demand recognition and inclusion, a Makarrata. Standing in a tent at Garma, Noel Pearson said: “We don’t need to listen to people who tell us Australians are too racist to act. We are in the business of finding the better angels in the breasts of people.” Professor Marcia Langton and Gumatj elder Galarrwuy Yunupingu at the Garma Festival near Nhulunbuy, East Arnhem Land. Credit:AAP On the last morning there we went to a women's crying ceremony held at 5:30 am as the sky lightens from black - where the female Aboriginal elders - the matriarchs - cry in the day, cry for their land and their people, mourn, and comfort and call to each other. We sat in silence, ringed by smouldering fires and eucalypts on a ridge with views of the far-off sea, transfixed. It was suffering and solace in song, a lament of love, a raw paean to life. It was unlike anything I have ever heard. At the end, the women paused and one elder said: “And now we wait for the bird to sing.” One minute later, it did. Now, said the elder, “You have been welcomed by the old ladies”, the greatest of honours. The Garma protocols also say: “Treat old people with the greatest of respect – they hold the knowledge and the power.”

Now, doing so is not just a moral act, it’s an urgent one.

Julia Baird hosts The Drum on ABCTV.