musician | custodianship educator | activist

Nidala Barker is a Jabirr-Jabirr /Djugun singer-songwriter, public speaker, and custodianship educator. She is also the co-founder of an alternative education program which centres Indigenous practices at the core of the curriculum and delivery method. In 2021 she released a carbon-neutral EP titled ‘Colours of my people’ which led to the planting of over 20,000 native plants. She currently sits on the board of Green Music Australia and The Returning Indigenous Corporation.

Nidala was born in the West Kimberley in 1994 to an Aboriginal father and French mother. Her upbringing was spent deeply rooted in Jabirr-Jabirr and Djugun cultural practices whilst still travelling the world and completing her high-school education in France. She studied education and dance for three years at Macquarie University in Sydney before pivoting to a double bachelor in Social Policy and Social Justice Law, which she completed in 2016. She went on to graduate with a Masters of Sustainability from the University of Sydney in 2018, supported by her research in the jungles of Northern Colombia and urban farms in Sydney.

Her musical career kicked off in late 2019 when she self-produced and self-released her first single 'Howl at the Moon’. She was then asked to join the

Tambah Project, alongside Kyle Lionheart and Billy Otto in early 2020, aimed at writing a song for the Earth. This seeded the inspiration for her next project ‘Colours of my People’, a carbon neutral EP that led to the planting of over 20,000 native plants, and features in publications like Rolling Stones and the ABC.

Her artistic practice is a musical iteration of the stories and lessons she has learnt from her people, The Djugun an Jabirr-Jabirr people of the West Kimberley, aimed at fostering a sense of belonging to Country and encouraging collaboration across groups under the theme of custodianship. Her primary medium is music, however her performances and workshops include educational pieces and stories weaved throughout.

Nidala has found popularity through her unique blending of music, sustainability advocacy, storytelling and eloquent articulation of complex topics. She has appeared on numerous podcasts, such as Impact Zone, Wardrobe Crisis, It takes courage to tell the truth, and Workforce Australia; and is regularly invited to speak on panels, such at the ‘Blak is Green’ event alongside Rhoda Roberts and Neil Morriss, Bigsound inBrisbane and the Indigenous Women’s panel at Culture Camp festival.

Nidala also has an innovative and musically based take on an Acknowledgement of Country practice, coined ‘collective drop-in’; she has been asked to perform these for companies and NGOs such as Xyntheo, Fire to Flourish, The Red Cross, The Australian Embassy in Paris, Better Futures Forum in Canberra, The Social Impact Summit in Sydney, as well as the Nexus Summit in New York.

Nidala was awarded the inaugural ‘Emerging Artist Environmental Music Prize’ in collaboration with the Byron Writers Festival in 2022 and recently co-ran the first Sound Country Retreat with Green Music Australia which allowed twenty leading female-identifying artists to deepen their advocacy within their artistic practice.