For one of Australia's most influential Aboriginal leaders, the failure of the voice referendum is written in blue and orange on the nation's electoral map.

Noel Pearson, the architect of the "blue dot communities" frame, sees in that map a hard truth about who wanted constitutional recognition and who turned it away.

Most of the continent is washed in orange dots, representing the urban, regional and settled electorates that voted 'no'.

Scattered across the north and centre are the blue dots, the remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander homelands that backed the voice, often overwhelmingly.

Mr Pearson told the Garma Festival those small communities, including his own in Cape York, were the places the voice was designed to serve.

Three years on from the referendum campaign, Mr Pearson still feels the burden of raising hopes in communities that strongly backed the failed proposal.

He asked what right leaders had to lift expectations that proved to be "a mirage" but said that could not be an excuse to walk away from the blue dot homelands.

Instead, he pointed to a new generation of community and regional leaders, particularly young Aboriginal women, emerging to take up the work of reform.

He described them as competent and relentless, carrying the love of their people and determined to turn moral authority into political power.

Yothu Yindi Foundation chief executive Denise Bowden used Garma's "Super Saturday" forum to urge Australians not to let the referendum loss or historic injustices define what came next.

"We must remember the past but we must not be defined by our past," Ms Bowden told the Garma forum.

"We must refuse to be defined by the event that took place on 14 October 2023 - the referendum."

She said the task for leaders now was to ensure this generation was judged by how it built a future for children based on fairness, equity and opportunity.

Sunday is day three of this year's 26th annual Garma Festival at the Gulkula ceremonial site on Yolngu Country, running under the theme Bukmak, meaning "all of us, everyone, together".

The four-day celebration of Yolngu life and culture, held about 40km from Nhulunbuy on the Gove Peninsula, will conclude on Monday.

Sunday's program will push the post-referendum conversation beyond Canberra and into the homelands and regions that bore the weight of the voice campaign.

Sessions on homelands will highlight their role as places of family authority, language, ceremony, ranger work and local enterprise, challenging depictions of them as marginal or in decline.

An "International Voices" stream will draw on longstanding Yolngu and Islander connections with South East Asia and the Pacific to strengthen modern partnerships on climate, development and security.

They will examine what lies ahead for First Nations people in a post-referendum Australia and how governments, business and communities can respond.

From Mr Pearson's blue dot homelands to the red earth of Gulkula, Garma's Sunday events are framed as a refusal to let the story end in defeat.

Organisers and speakers say the focus now is on long-term structural change and a just settlement that honours the communities that voted 'yes'.

Australian Associated Press