Charlie Newili Brinken is the 'Figure of Hope' who will animate our public philosophy event at the Library and Archives NT performance space, Cavenagh St, on April 28, 2026, at 2 pm.

Charlie is 'present' in our event in the form of two heritage items – marluk (didgeridoo) and kuragadha (boomerang) that 'came to life' in his hands in Wadeye in the early 1930s. In 2025 these items fell unexpectedly into the metaphorical arms of CDU's First Nations Sovereignty and Diplomacy Centre (FNSDC).

This seminar will follow a private Wangga Ceremony in the morning associated with the repatriation of the items which have wandered far and wide for eighty years. The purpose of our event is celebration. We will tell a small part of the story of the items' coming to life in the 1930s, and the trajectory which led them to land in the FNSDC in 2025.

As we interpret things, these items are profoundly entangled with the fate of three Japanese seamen Nagata, Yoshida, and Owashi whose memorial stands in the Gardens Road Cemetery.

Wadeye elders William Thengalith Parmbuk will present the life story of Charlie Newili Brinken, Prof Helen Verran will propose ‘Hope’ as a cultural force, Dr Leonie Norrington will ask about the roles of the storyteller, and Dr Yasunori Hayashi will suggest that musical heritage items have a special place in twenty first century diplomacy.

The stories accounted in our public philosophy event will provide a catalyst for documentation of the Murrinh people’s oral histories, the generation of a variety of historically focused archival records, and we hope eventual re-telling in Japan, of the stories of the Japanese presence in pre-WWII northern Australia. Our hope is that we can multiply possibilities for many reconciliatory events in the future.

This event is in collaboration with the Library and Archives NT, Northern Institute and Murin Association Incorporated.

For more information and registration, visit: http://go.cdu.edu.au/frca