From silence to celebration : Indigenous Australian performers at the Woodford Folk Festival

Presently in Australia there are a range of performance opportunities available to Australia's two Indigenous peoples: Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Folk festivals in particular currently provide an important outlet for their talents as musicans, storytellers, and dancers. This chapter examines the Murri Program at the Woodford Folk Festival, the largest in the southern hemisphere. Highlighted are the insights ofa key organiser of the Murri Programme, Walbira Wafts, detailing how she negotiates and navigates the complex issues of politics, protocols, programming, and personalities. It is argued the Murri Programme is an historically notable change from exclusion to inclusion and plays a positive ro1e in ethnogenesis and the construction of Aboriginality.