Djaadjawan Dancers joined with other women of the South Coast and beyond to perform a healing ceremonial dance for the first time in Eden on Saturday at the inaugural Giiyong Festival.
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The dance and ceremony significantly began at dusk with the ochre painted women walking through the crowd, cleansing country with smoke from coolamons.
Dance leader Sharon Mason said this was the first time women had come together from far and wide and it was important for all women to come together as one.
“The net is tightened with women connected, we need to keep us all together.”
The ceremony led by Elder Vivienne Mason saw members of the dance group aged from two months to 75 performing a number of important ceremonial dances as well as taking silence to honour the women elders and ancestors past and present, including Aunty Liddy Stewart and Aunty Doris Kirby (both who had stages named in their honour at the festival).
The Whale migration dance was performed, a significant dance of whales travelling through just as the ancestors passed through country choreographed and led by Aunty Vivienne Mason.
The significance of publicly performing a women’s ceremony timed in perfectly with this year’s NAIDOC theme “Because of her we can”.
“The women’s hierarchy is continuing and we must conduct ceremony for it to continue. Grandma’s Law is the strongest over all,” Ms Mason said.
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