Garma Festival 2019

Meet Professor Julie Satur who is leading partnership work for the Melbourne Dental School in East Arnhem land to improve oral health for Aboriginal people.

Since 2016, Professor Julie Satur has joined Australia’s largest Indigenous cultural gathering, the Garma Festival, held over four days each year in Northeast Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, Australia. Garma is hosted by the Yothu Yindi Foundation and is a celebration of the cultural traditions of the Yolngu people of the Arnhem Land region.

"Australian Indigenous people have higher levels of oral disease and poorer health than non-Indigenous people. The work we are doing in this partnership will help to improve capacity to provide oral health services and health promotion, and develop workforce for remote Aboriginal communities

It's really important that this project, and the Oral Health Plan for Northeast Arnhem Land are led by Miwatj Health Aboriginal Corporation for Aboriginal people as they are the experts in their own lives.

As part of this work, we are really keen to learn about how Yolngu people understand and experience oral health and disease from within their cultural perspective and how Yolngu knowledges can work in this space"  ~  Professor Julie Satur

^{Mallory Mac Donald providing care for a family in northeast Arnhem Land.}

This understanding would be used to develop culturally located resources and interventions to improve oral health for Yolngu people in East Arnhem Land.