Its population comprises predominantly Aboriginal Australians of the Yolngu people, and it is also home to a number of Mission Aviation Fellowship pilots and engineers based in Arnhem Land, providing air transport services.

[3] Around this time, the Methodist Overseas Mission (MOM) was encouraging their senior staff to study anthropology under A. P. Elkin at Sydney University, to learn more about Aboriginal Australian culture, in particular the Yolngu people who lived in East Arnhem.

The residents were free to come and go as they wished, and the interaction was on the whole positive in those early days, with a lack of dogmatism by the missionaries, and the Yolngu people accommodating Christianity within a version of their own beliefs.

Many mission residents worked there, as boat pilots for the RAAF and the Royal Australia Navy, or assisted the war effort by other means.

Although the petition itself was unsuccessful in the sense that the bauxite mining at Nhulunbuy went ahead as planned, it alerted non-Indigenous Australians to the need for Indigenous representation in such decisions, and it prompted a government report recommending compensation payments, protection of sacred sites, creation of a permanent parliamentary standing committee to scrutinise developments at Yirrkala, and also acknowledgments of the Indigenous people's moral right to their lands.

Pioneer bark painters from this region who the National Museum of Australia consider old masters include Mithinarri Gurruwiwi, Birrikitji Gumana and Mawalan Marika.

The festival's June 2021 iteration was directed by Witiyana Marika, and featured the Andrew Gurruwiwi Band, Yothu Yindi, Yirrmal, and East Journey.

[19] The historic Yirrkala Church Panels were created in 1963 by Yolngu elders of the Dhuwa moiety (including Mawalan Marika, Wandjuk Marika and Mithinarri Gurruwiwi), who painted one sheet with their major ancestral narratives and clan designs, and eight elders of the Yirritja moiety, including Mungurrawuy Yunupingu, Birrikitji Gumana and Narritjin Maymuru, who painted the other sheet with Yirritja designs.

[24] The centre has been a base for several major artists, including Gulumbu Yunupingu, Banduk Marika, Gunybi Ganambarr, Djambawa Marawili, and Yanggarriny Wunungmurra.

The method has proven effective against reducing the drop-out rate, and in 2020 eight students were the first in their community to graduate year 12 with scores enabling them to attend university.

[36] She retired in early 2023 after 40 years at the school, with family, friends, colleagues and other community members gathering to celebrate her contribution.