For theatre-maker Jacob Boehme, a Narungga/Kaurna man whose ancestral lands lie along Yorke Peninsula, the work of learning his nation’s stories is never complete. Boehme’s latest piece, Guurunda, premieres at Adelaide Festival this year, and brings together stories from Narungga Country in a vast, multi-disciplinary work. But Boehme himself didn’t know all Guurunda’s stories until five years ago. 

‘There is one story we tell in this work, which is the creation of our dingo, and I didn’t know that until about 2017,’ Boehme says over Zoom from his home in Melbourne. At a barbecue to celebrate his cousin’s birthday, he got chatting about a conversation he’d had with a songman from north of Queensland. ‘He had said to me that they have a dingo song, where their song is the resting song of the dingo (where it dies). But the songman told me that the dingo songline starts from where my country is. I had never in my whole life heard anyone in the family talk about any kind of dingo songline we have as Narungga people.’ He mentioned this to his cousin, Uncle Eddie. ‘And Eddie, straight off the bat, says, “Yeah. We call him Warrugadli; he’s the roaming dog. That storyline goes all the way up the east coast.” Next thing you know I was back in country over on Yorke Peninsula being shown all the spots where the dingo travels.’

Boehme says it is ‘a beautiful thing’ to still be learning his nation’s stories, but it’s also a symptom of the colonisation that drove the stories underground in the first place. Guurunda is the first opportunity he has had, as a First Nations artist, to present a work of Narungga storytelling on this scale. ‘This is the first time we’re taking our stories on a main stage and sharing it with broader audiences.’ It has been an enormous undertaking, with a cast that includes a family choir of 30 Narungga people, as well as dancers from various First Nations. 

Landscape is at the heart of the piece, which is central to Narungga identity. ‘When we’re singing and dancing stories, then you only need to look down to the furthest southern point and you can see Bulgawan [the wicked old woman] in the cliffs. The same when you look at the story of the bat, Madjidju: he’s a rock formation that is also down in the south. Then there’s Nhandhu, the red kangaroo, who is our law man who features heavily in our stories.’ 

Guurunda is just one production created and led by First Nations artists across Adelaide’s festivals this year. One of the performances Boehme is looking forward to seeing is Blue, a solo play about loss and growing up, written by Kamilaroi man Thomas Weatherall and performed by Wiradjuri man Callan Purcell. Elsewhere, Australian Dance Theatre’s ambitious new production Marrow explores Australian history and the national conscience: it’s choreographed by artistic director Daniel Riley, a Wiradjuri man and the only First Nations artist to helm the company. 

At Adelaide Fringe, there are cultural tours of the city’s Botanic Garden hosted by First Nations leaders, rap and rock celebrations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture in Zenadth Kes MeribaWed (‘Our Songs’), and the return of Aboriginal Comedy Allstars, featuring Sean Choolburra and 2022 Deadly Funny winner, Janty Blair.

For any festival-goer wanting to immerse themselves in Ngarrindjeri Country and culture, the Dupang Pangari festival is unmissable. The three-day festival-within-a-festival is led by senior Ngarrindjeri Elder Major Moogy Sumner and, as with Guurunda, the art and ceremony that will be explored is deeply rooted in the landscape. 

‘Dupang Pangari is a healing spirit,’ says Sumner. ‘When people come there, they come to see the ceremonies, to learn about the land, the stories, the spirit of this land, but they also learn about how we use it for healing: dance, talking about creation, stories about the stars. That’s what Dupang Pangari means.’ It will take place on the banks of the Coorong (Kurangk in its original Ngarrindjeri name), the neck of water at the mouth of the Murray River which, in Ngarrindjeri stories, was created by blending several bodies of water into the river mouth. It’s a medicinal river: Sumner remembers as a child being taken to have sores on his skin bathed away. ‘There’s guardianship there,’ he says. ‘There’s healing.’

The festival will open with a dance ceremony from multiple Ngarrindjeri groups, as well as storytelling, basket weaving, woodcarving and, if the wind is gentle, boomerang throwing (although Sumner admits ‘that could be a bit dicey’). For Sumner, the Fringe presents an opportunity to share his culture with visitors from outside Australia. ‘People come here from all over the world,’ he says. ‘If you put all the Aboriginal cultures at the Fringe, that saves them travelling all over Australia. They’re here, they see them, and they learn.’