Where We Belong: Connecting Indigenous identity and wellbeing in the city is a three-year (2025-2028) community-designed, led, and governed project about what it means to belong, be well, and live a good life for Indigenous peoples in cities. Since 2025, the study has undertaken yarning interviews with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who live in the ACT region (Canberra/Queanbeyan) about their experiences in Australia’s capital city. This poster presents the early insights shared by these knowledge holders, focused on the realities of walking in two worlds, the dualities of connection/disconnection to Country, culture, and identity, feelings of both grief and joy experienced in and through the body, and a deep yearning to ‘fill your cup’ to create stability and resilience. These insights are situated within the often-transient urban Canberra community and reflect the complexities involved in navigating belonging beyond traditional ties which have been impacted by colonisation. While still in-progress, Where We Belong hopes to demonstrate that finding and growing our sense of local belonging as urban Indigenous peoples has lifelong and intergenerational wellbeing benefits.

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, wellbeing has never lived in the individual body alone. It exists in relationship to Country, kin, culture, story, rhythm, and ceremony. These are not symbolic ideas. They are systems that regulate, develop, and heal, sustaining communities across generations.

Contemporary neuroscience is beginning to describe what First Nations peoples have always known: that safety, connection, repetition, meaning, and collective presence are the conditions under which human brains develop, recover, and thrive.

Yiliyapinya Indigenous Corporation does not translate culture into clinical language for communities. Instead, it translates community-grounded practice into language that systems are willing to hear - while keeping cultural authority where it belongs.

The Yili Youth Program operates at this intersection. Delivered with and for First Nations young people in South East Queensland, the program uses neuroplasticity principles not as an external framework imposed on culture, but as a vocabulary for naming what cultural practice has always done. Ceremony, rhythm, collective presence, and cultural continuity are recognised as regulatory systems - shaping attention, emotional safety, identity, and belonging.

Queensland Police data indicates measurable reductions in reoffending among program participants over time. Families report improvements in development and behaviour, and staff show stronger indicators of regulation and brain health. These outcomes are not incidental - they reflect what happens when cultural authority drives the model.

This presentation will outline Yiliyapinya’s approach: how a small, Indigenous-led organisation holds the tension between cultural integrity and institutional legibility, and why that tension is not a compromise - it is the intervention.

Neuroscience is not catching up to culture so culture can be handed over to science. It is catching up so we can clearly name, in system-recognised terms, what culture has always sustained.

This session offers an interactive glimpse into Leadership Through Learning (LTL), a Māori and Pacific-led programme at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland designed to bridge the gap between Māori and Pacific students and the university by centring cultural identity as a foundation for success. Grounded in the universities indigenous stratergies Kawea Ake and Ala o le Moana, LTL reframes education as a collective, relational, and Indigenous-led pathway to leadership, influence, and belonging.
Rather than presenting the programme as a case study, this session invites participants to experience the values and practices that underpin LTL. Through facilitated talanoa and wānanga-style engagement, participants will explore the interconnected relationships between tangata whenua, tangata moana, and tangata rau, and how these shape culturally grounded learning environments within tertiary education.
LTL is intentionally intergenerational, drawing on the knowledge of kaumātua, Pacific elders, staff, and tauira to ensure learning is guided with care, consent, and cultural integrity. The session will also surface how Leadership Through Learning creates space for talanoa and reflection. Our teina will gain insight into how Māori and Pacific mātauranga can be enacted within institutional settings to strengthen identity, agency, and long-term wellbeing. LTL demonstrates how education, when Indigenous-led, can uplift tauira to navigate university with confidence while remaining grounded in their heritage.
This session is for those seeking practical, values-driven approaches to indigenising education and creating spaces where culture is not only recognised but actively lived and sustained.

Background

Significant gains in Māori health can be achieved through improved design of cancer care in Aotearoa. Current cancer pathways do not adequately meet Māori needs, leading to delayed access to treatment and lower survival. These pathways are often fragmented and fail to provide holistic, culturally safe and competent care. Effective approaches must centre whānau/family and community voice, recognising lived experience as essential to shaping models of care. The Cancer Whiri I (CW1) and II projects aimed to co-design an integrated care model grounded in Māori worldviews, values and realities.

Methods

We used Kaupapa Māori methodology and He Pikinga Waiora Implementation framework to engage cancer stakeholders (patients/whānau, rongoā Māori practitioners, community service providers). A wānanga/forum approach to co-design was used to inform both studies. CW1 focused on early intervention with co-design sessions centered around a patient group, and their whānau. These patients called for a mātauranga Māori framework and integration of rongoā Māori into the model, which became a focus of CW2. In CW2, a wider group of co-design partners were engaged to understand different experiences along the whole cancer care pathway, through treatment and beyond.

Results

Co-design approaches brought together a range of expertise, roles and organisations to develop the model, a mātauranga-based framework, and culturally grounded support. Co-design partners identified pathway issues and gaps, and how Whiri could work alongside existing services to support patients/whānau. Co-design partners and the research team identified ways to make care culturally safe, accessible, timely and high quality for patients.

Implications/Key Message

Equitable cancer care for Māori requires systems that prioritise whānau voices, cultural safety, and integration of traditional and contemporary healing practices, such as rongoā Māori. Centering community voices and lived experiences, and listening to diverse stakeholder perspectives, enabled the research team to redesign cancer care that maximises hauroa/health gains for Māori.

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, wellbeing has never lived in the individual body alone. It exists in relationship to Country, kin, culture, story, rhythm, and ceremony. These are not symbolic ideas. They are systems that regulate, develop, and heal, sustaining communities across generations.

Contemporary neuroscience is beginning to describe what First Nations peoples have always known: that safety, connection, repetition, meaning, and collective presence are the conditions under which human brains develop, recover, and thrive.

Yiliyapinya Indigenous Corporation does not translate culture into clinical language for communities. Instead, it translates community-grounded practice into language that systems are willing to hear - while keeping cultural authority where it belongs.

The Yili Youth Program operates at this intersection. Delivered with and for First Nations young people in South East Queensland, the program uses neuroplasticity principles not as an external framework imposed on culture, but as a vocabulary for naming what cultural practice has always done. Ceremony, rhythm, collective presence, and cultural continuity are recognised as regulatory systems - shaping attention, emotional safety, identity, and belonging.

Queensland Police data indicates measurable reductions in reoffending among program participants over time. Families report improvements in development and behaviour, and staff show stronger indicators of regulation and brain health. These outcomes are not incidental - they reflect what happens when cultural authority drives the model.

This presentation will outline Yiliyapinya’s approach: how a small, Indigenous-led organisation holds the tension between cultural integrity and institutional legibility, and why that tension is not a compromise - it is the intervention.

Neuroscience is not catching up to culture so culture can be handed over to science. It is catching up so we can clearly name, in system-recognised terms, what culture has always sustained.

This presentation shares findings from my doctoral research exploring Māori teacher wellbeing and the re-theorisation of cultural safety within schooling contexts. While cultural safety has been widely developed within health sectors, its application in education has often been assumed rather than critically examined. This research centres the lived experiences of Māori teachers to understand how wellbeing is shaped through everyday school cultures, leadership relationships, and institutional expectations.

My study identifies the significant emotional, cultural, and relational responsibilities Māori teachers frequently carry, including advocacy for Indigenous learners, navigating deficit assumptions, and supporting colleagues’ cultural understanding. These cumulative demands can contribute to fatigue and professional vulnerability when cultural safety is framed as an individual competency rather than a systemic condition.

Aligned with the conference theme Beyond Healing: Sustaining Social and Emotional Wellbeing, the presentation reframes cultural safety in education as a regenerative and collective practice. It argues that sustaining Māori teacher wellbeing requires relationally responsive leadership, shared responsibility for cultural work, and schooling environments that enable teachers to enact professional authority and cultural integrity.

The research contributes a culturally grounded framework that positions Māori teacher wellbeing as central to strengthening Indigenous educational futures.

Rangatahi are growing up in digital environments that shape how they connect, learn, express identity, and experience wellbeing. Public narratives frequently position young people as passive recipients of harm in online spaces, leading to restrictive policies that are developed without their meaningful involvement. This presentation centres rangatahi voices from participatory research with young people aged 12–15 from Māori, Pacific, Deaf, and Rainbow communities across Aotearoa New Zealand, exploring how digital media shapes their everyday lives and wellbeing.

The study positions rangatahi as knowledge holders and co-interpreters of their own experiences through a Youth Participatory Action Research approach. Findings highlight the complex realities of digital life, where online environments function simultaneously as spaces of belonging, cultural validation, identity expression, creativity, and support—particularly for young people whose identities are not always reflected in offline settings. At the same time, rangatahi described challenges including pressure to remain constantly connected, exposure to harmful or discriminatory content, and the emotional impacts of comparison and online conflict.

Importantly, rangatahi demonstrated strong critical awareness of these tensions and articulated practical strategies for supporting healthy engagement. They emphasised the importance of relational guidance, trust, and shared decision-making with adults, while also highlighting the limitations of restrictive approaches such as device bans, which often fail to reflect the realities of their digital worlds.

We argue that restoring rangatahi authority in conversations about digital wellbeing is essential for developing culturally grounded and sustainable responses. Rather than positioning digital environments as problems to be controlled, this work invites a shift toward understanding them as relational spaces that require collective navigation. Aligning with Indigenous wellbeing frameworks that privilege collective responsibility and relational practice, the session explores how youth-centred approaches can inform education, policy, and community initiatives in digitally saturated contexts, supporting not only safe engagement, but identity, connection, and long-term wellbeing.

Despite the ongoing impacts of colonisation, Indigenous adolescents are resilient. They are the emerging leaders and custodians of their cultures and histories. Over the past two decades, there has been a decline in alcohol and cigarette use among Indigenous adolescents. However, communities have raised concerns about the rapid rise of e-cigarette use (vaping) and its associated harms. No school-based vaping prevention program currently exists that is culturally inclusive of Indigenous adolescents. This study examines important protective factors against vaping among Indigenous adolescents (part 1) and the co-development of a strengths-focused, school-based prevention program (part 2).

In part 1, data was drawn from the first wave of the national Strong & Deadly Futures trial, which is overseen by an Aboriginal Reference Group. We calculated rates of vaping and conducted regression analyses to assess associations between vaping and protective factors. Among 368 Indigenous students in year 7/8 (mean age 13 years) from 22 schools, 60.2% had never tried vaping. Students who did not vape had higher wellbeing, greater self-efficacy to resist peer pressure, and perceived lower rates of vaping among their peers.

Leveraging these protective factors and to inform a culturally inclusive vaping-prevention program in part 2, co-design workshops were held with 123 students (72% Indigenous) in WA, QLD and NSW. There were 12 workshops in total, led by creative partner, Cause/Affect, and facilitated by collaborators, including Wellmob. The program includes an animated story supported by curriculum mapped lessons that build skills, reinforce prevention messages, and celebrate connection to culture, community, and Country. All lessons are delivered with the support of an Aboriginal teacher/education officer to ensure cultural safety and guidance. By equipping Indigenous students with knowledge, practical skills, and strong socio-emotional wellbeing supports, the program aims to help them avoid the harms associated with vaping.

Connecting to Country is an Aboriginal-led research project on local traditional foods based in the Kimberley, Western Australia. The qualitative component of the project involved yarning with 21 participants from the Karajarri and Bardi/Jawi language groups, either individually, in pairs, or in small groups. In these yarns, participants shared their experiences with traditional foods and food practices, and how these contribute to Social and Emotional Wellbeing (SEWB). Five themes emerged from those yarns: (1) the seasons are the cornerstone of health, (2) being on Country, (3) mental health and spiritual wellbeing, (4) sharing/relationships, and (5) the intergenerational transfer of cultural knowledge. Almost all participants talked about the central role the local Aboriginal seasons play in wellbeing. Their knowledge of the seasons also guides sustainable food gathering/hunting practices ensuring the sustainability and wellbeing of plants, animals and Country. Passing on knowledges of traditional foods to the next generations impacts on SEWB and a sense of connection to Country. In addition, participants talked about the barriers they face hunting or collecting traditional foods. However, they also shared their strategies for overcoming these barriers to ensure they still have access to traditional foods. These strategies highlight the adaptability and resourcefulness of Aboriginal people and provide tangible approaches for increasing the consumption of traditional foods, further improving SEWB.

This presentation explores Indigenous leadership in climate adaptation through the “Changes to Country” project, a community-led initiative grounded in long-term relationship building and decolonial research practice. Working alongside Aboriginal communities in Perth, this project centres the leadership of Elders, including Uncle Noel Nannup and Aunty Dale Tilbrook, to guide culturally responsive approaches to climate change adaptation and protection of Country.
An implementation-focused framework underpins this work, prioritising community governance, cultural authority, and place-based knowledge systems. Central to the project is a reflexive approach to practice; one that values listening, observing, and walking alongside community rather than directing outcomes. This involves sitting with community, building trust over time, and engaging in ongoing critical reflection to ensure the work remains accountable, respectful, and responsive to community priorities.
Key activities have included a series of free bushtucker workshops for Aboriginal participants, creating culturally safe spaces to share knowledge about traditional food systems while facilitating community-led discussions on climate change and its impacts on social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB). In addition, rites of passage camps for young Aboriginal men have supported cultural identity, intergenerational knowledge transfer, and social and emotional wellbeing in the context of environmental change.
This work demonstrates how Aboriginal-led, place-based approaches can support climate adaptation, wellbeing, and cultural continuity. It highlights the importance of relational accountability, Elder leadership, and reflexive, decolonial methodologies in strengthening culture and protecting Country in a changing climate.