Demographics
Declared an Aboriginal Reserve in 1931, it remains one of the largest Aboriginal Reserves in Australia and is perhaps best known for its isolation, the art of its people, and the strong continuing traditions of its Indigenous inhabitants. Northeast Arnhem Land is home to the indigenous Yolngu people, one of the largest Indigenous groups in Australia, and one who have succeeded in maintaining a vigorous traditional indigenous culture. The Malays and Macassans are believed to have had contact with the coastal Aboriginal groups and traded with them prior to European settlement of Australia.
The 2006 film Ten Canoes captures life in Arnhem Land through a story tapping into the aboriginal mythic past; it was co-directed by one of the indigenous cast members. The film and the documentary about the making of the film, The Balano and the Bark Canoes, give a remarkable testimony to the indigenous struggle to keep their culture alive - or rather revive it in the wake of considerable relative modernization and influence of white ('balano') cultural imposition.
Read more about this topic: Arnhem Land