Yothu Yindi — Treaty and the Moment Everything Changed.

If you want a single moment that represents the breakthrough of Indigenous music into the Australian mainstream, this is it.

Yothu Yindi — a band of Yolŋu and non-Indigenous musicians from Arnhem Land — released Treaty in 1991, a powerful protest against the Australian Government's failure to honour Prime Minister Bob Hawke's promise of a treaty, made at the Barunga Festival in 1988. The original version struggled for commercial airtime. Then a Melbourne DJ remixed it into a dance track, and everything shifted.

On 14 July 1991, a remix of Yothu Yindi's Treaty became the first song by an Aboriginal band to reach the mainstream pop singles chart in Australia, peaking at number 11 in September 1991. It was the first pop song to be sung in a Yolŋu Matha language.

Lead singer Mandawuy Yunupingu was named Australian of the Year in 1992. The band toured internationally, played the 1993 AFL Grand Final alongside Archie Roach, and opened a door that had been firmly shut for decades. From the 1980s until the serious rise of First Nations hip-hop in the 2010s, First Nations artists seemed to only get an industry push once every five years or so — Yothu Yindi's breakthrough in 1991 was one of those rare, seismic moments. And it came from the heart of Arnhem Land, sung partly in Yolŋu Matha, and it didn't apologise for any of it.