Across Lands and Lineages: Decolonising Mental Health Through Collective Healing
Tracks
Dingo Room: In-Person Only
| Monday, October 20, 2025 |
| 11:25 AM - 12:25 PM |
| Dingo Room (M4) |
Overview
Ziyad Serhan, Educaid, Assala Sayyara, Shifa Project, Jayne Christian, Barabirang Projects
Presenter
Ms Jayne Christian
Director
Barabirang Projects
Across Lands and Lineages: Decolonising Mental Health Through Collective Healing
Presentation Overview
This presentation brings together Aboriginal and Palestinian Indigenous perspectives to explore collective healing in the face of systemic violence, historical trauma, and ongoing colonisation. Drawing on their lived experiences and frontline community work, Baramadagal woman Jayne Christian and Palestinian social worker and counsellor Assala Sayara share their collaboration through the Shifa Project- an initiative rooted in addressing wellbeing challenges through declonial, Indigenous-led and culturally grounded practices.
Through healing circles, yarning circles, imagery, land connection, storytelling, and cultural embodiment, the presenters demonstrate how community-led processes create spaces for connection, truth-telling, and resistance. These methods affirm what many Indigenous communities know: that healing is not individual, but relational- tied to land, community, ancestry, and collective memory.
The presentation will explore how these circles have been adapted and facilitated across diasporic and local contexts, fostering cultural safety, emotional regulation, and deep listening. It will also highlight how Aboriginal and Palestinian communities are reclaiming mental health care by rejecting Western clinical models that fragment experience and by reviving traditions that prioritise community, spiritual integrity, and cultural continuity.
The presentation addresses the importance of validating and utilising indigenous knowledge in collective healing to avoid epistemological violence.
This work is a call for deeper trans-Indigenous solidarity, reminding us that while our geographies may differ, our struggles and strengths often mirror one another. It is also a testament to the power of Indigenous-led models of care in rebuilding systems that centre dignity, resistance, belonging and indigenous knowledges.
Submitted in full respect of Indigenous leadership, this abstract represents a participatory, decolonial and culturally grounded partnership, with both presenters deeply embedded in their communities and in the work of collective healing.
Three Key Learnings:
1. Understand how collective healing practices grounded in land, community, and ancestral connection offer culturally safe alternatives to Western mental health models, supporting pathways to Indigenous wellbeing.
2. Explore the use of healing circles and yarning circles as powerful tools for truth-telling, emotional regulation, and restoring cultural identity in both local and diasporic communities.
3. Recognise the importance of Indigenous-led models of care and the validation of cultural knowledges in preventing epistemological violence and enabling communities to walk forward in strength, resistance, and relational flourishing.
Through healing circles, yarning circles, imagery, land connection, storytelling, and cultural embodiment, the presenters demonstrate how community-led processes create spaces for connection, truth-telling, and resistance. These methods affirm what many Indigenous communities know: that healing is not individual, but relational- tied to land, community, ancestry, and collective memory.
The presentation will explore how these circles have been adapted and facilitated across diasporic and local contexts, fostering cultural safety, emotional regulation, and deep listening. It will also highlight how Aboriginal and Palestinian communities are reclaiming mental health care by rejecting Western clinical models that fragment experience and by reviving traditions that prioritise community, spiritual integrity, and cultural continuity.
The presentation addresses the importance of validating and utilising indigenous knowledge in collective healing to avoid epistemological violence.
This work is a call for deeper trans-Indigenous solidarity, reminding us that while our geographies may differ, our struggles and strengths often mirror one another. It is also a testament to the power of Indigenous-led models of care in rebuilding systems that centre dignity, resistance, belonging and indigenous knowledges.
Submitted in full respect of Indigenous leadership, this abstract represents a participatory, decolonial and culturally grounded partnership, with both presenters deeply embedded in their communities and in the work of collective healing.
Three Key Learnings:
1. Understand how collective healing practices grounded in land, community, and ancestral connection offer culturally safe alternatives to Western mental health models, supporting pathways to Indigenous wellbeing.
2. Explore the use of healing circles and yarning circles as powerful tools for truth-telling, emotional regulation, and restoring cultural identity in both local and diasporic communities.
3. Recognise the importance of Indigenous-led models of care and the validation of cultural knowledges in preventing epistemological violence and enabling communities to walk forward in strength, resistance, and relational flourishing.
Biography
Jayne Christian is a Baramadagal woman of the Dharug-speaking peoples. A former lawyer, she now advocates for Indigenous rights through public art, advisory, and mediation work. Jayne grounds her advocacy in UNDRIP and the Aboriginal Social and Emotional Wellbeing Framework.
She is the founding Director of Barabirang Projects, supporting healing-focused activities on-Country in response to settler colonialism. She holds several advisory roles, including with the Treaty Council. A former Galang Residency artist at Powerhouse Parramatta, she is currently in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, exhibiting work on Palestinian and Blackfella solidarity.
Ms Assala Sayara
Social Worker, Counsellor, Phd Student, Founder of Haweyate
Haweyate
Across Lands and Lineages: Decolonising Mental Health Through Collective Healing
Presentation Overview
This presentation brings together Aboriginal and Palestinian Indigenous perspectives to explore collective healing in the face of systemic violence, historical trauma, and ongoing colonisation. Drawing on their lived experiences and frontline community work, Baramadagal woman Jayne Christian and Palestinian social worker and counsellor Assala Sayara share their collaboration through the Shifa Project- an initiative rooted in addressing wellbeing challenges through declonial, Indigenous-led and culturally grounded practices.
Through healing circles, yarning circles, imagery, land connection, storytelling, and cultural embodiment, the presenters demonstrate how community-led processes create spaces for connection, truth-telling, and resistance. These methods affirm what many Indigenous communities know: that healing is not individual, but relational- tied to land, community, ancestry, and collective memory.
The presentation will explore how these circles have been adapted and facilitated across diasporic and local contexts, fostering cultural safety, emotional regulation, and deep listening. It will also highlight how Aboriginal and Palestinian communities are reclaiming mental health care by rejecting Western clinical models that fragment experience and by reviving traditions that prioritise community, spiritual integrity, and cultural continuity.
The presentation addresses the importance of validating and utilising indigenous knowledge in collective healing to avoid epistemological violence.
This work is a call for deeper trans-Indigenous solidarity, reminding us that while our geographies may differ, our struggles and strengths often mirror one another. It is also a testament to the power of Indigenous-led models of care in rebuilding systems that centre dignity, resistance, belonging and indigenous knowledges.
Submitted in full respect of Indigenous leadership, this abstract represents a participatory, decolonial and culturally grounded partnership, with both presenters deeply embedded in their communities and in the work of collective healing.
Three Key Learnings:
1. Understand how collective healing practices grounded in land, community, and ancestral connection offer culturally safe alternatives to Western mental health models, supporting pathways to Indigenous wellbeing.
2. Explore the use of healing circles and yarning circles as powerful tools for truth-telling, emotional regulation, and restoring cultural identity in both local and diasporic communities.
3. Recognise the importance of Indigenous-led models of care and the validation of cultural knowledges in preventing epistemological violence and enabling communities to walk forward in strength, resistance, and relational flourishing.
Through healing circles, yarning circles, imagery, land connection, storytelling, and cultural embodiment, the presenters demonstrate how community-led processes create spaces for connection, truth-telling, and resistance. These methods affirm what many Indigenous communities know: that healing is not individual, but relational- tied to land, community, ancestry, and collective memory.
The presentation will explore how these circles have been adapted and facilitated across diasporic and local contexts, fostering cultural safety, emotional regulation, and deep listening. It will also highlight how Aboriginal and Palestinian communities are reclaiming mental health care by rejecting Western clinical models that fragment experience and by reviving traditions that prioritise community, spiritual integrity, and cultural continuity.
The presentation addresses the importance of validating and utilising indigenous knowledge in collective healing to avoid epistemological violence.
This work is a call for deeper trans-Indigenous solidarity, reminding us that while our geographies may differ, our struggles and strengths often mirror one another. It is also a testament to the power of Indigenous-led models of care in rebuilding systems that centre dignity, resistance, belonging and indigenous knowledges.
Submitted in full respect of Indigenous leadership, this abstract represents a participatory, decolonial and culturally grounded partnership, with both presenters deeply embedded in their communities and in the work of collective healing.
Three Key Learnings:
1. Understand how collective healing practices grounded in land, community, and ancestral connection offer culturally safe alternatives to Western mental health models, supporting pathways to Indigenous wellbeing.
2. Explore the use of healing circles and yarning circles as powerful tools for truth-telling, emotional regulation, and restoring cultural identity in both local and diasporic communities.
3. Recognise the importance of Indigenous-led models of care and the validation of cultural knowledges in preventing epistemological violence and enabling communities to walk forward in strength, resistance, and relational flourishing.
Biography
Assala Sayara is a Palestinian-born social worker, mental health practitioner, academic, and activist based in Sydney, Australia. She has experience in community development, child protection, and mental health across Jordan, Palestine, and Australia. Assala works as a primary and secondary school counsellor and tutors at the University of Sydney, where she is completing a PhD in Philosophy. A distinguished public speaker locally and globally, she advocates for justice and liberation, centering Palestinian and Indigenous rights. She is the founder and Director of Haweyate, a grassroots organisation fostering education, healing, and resistance within the Palestinian diaspora and beyond.
Mr Ziyad Serhan
CEO
Educaid
Across Lands and Lineages: Decolonising Mental Health Through Collective Healing
Presentation Overview
This presentation brings together Aboriginal and Palestinian Indigenous perspectives to explore collective healing in the face of systemic violence, historical trauma, and ongoing colonisation. Drawing on their lived experiences and frontline community work, Baramadagal woman Jayne Christian and Palestinian social worker and counsellor Assala Sayara share their collaboration through the Shifa Project- an initiative rooted in addressing wellbeing challenges through declonial, Indigenous-led and culturally grounded practices.
Through healing circles, yarning circles, imagery, land connection, storytelling, and cultural embodiment, the presenters demonstrate how community-led processes create spaces for connection, truth-telling, and resistance. These methods affirm what many Indigenous communities know: that healing is not individual, but relational- tied to land, community, ancestry, and collective memory.
The presentation will explore how these circles have been adapted and facilitated across diasporic and local contexts, fostering cultural safety, emotional regulation, and deep listening. It will also highlight how Aboriginal and Palestinian communities are reclaiming mental health care by rejecting Western clinical models that fragment experience and by reviving traditions that prioritise community, spiritual integrity, and cultural continuity.
The presentation addresses the importance of validating and utilising indigenous knowledge in collective healing to avoid epistemological violence.
This work is a call for deeper trans-Indigenous solidarity, reminding us that while our geographies may differ, our struggles and strengths often mirror one another. It is also a testament to the power of Indigenous-led models of care in rebuilding systems that centre dignity, resistance, belonging and indigenous knowledges.
Submitted in full respect of Indigenous leadership, this abstract represents a participatory, decolonial and culturally grounded partnership, with both presenters deeply embedded in their communities and in the work of collective healing.
Three Key Learnings:
1. Understand how collective healing practices grounded in land, community, and ancestral connection offer culturally safe alternatives to Western mental health models, supporting pathways to Indigenous wellbeing.
2. Explore the use of healing circles and yarning circles as powerful tools for truth-telling, emotional regulation, and restoring cultural identity in both local and diasporic communities.
3. Recognise the importance of Indigenous-led models of care and the validation of cultural knowledges in preventing epistemological violence and enabling communities to walk forward in strength, resistance, and relational flourishing.
Through healing circles, yarning circles, imagery, land connection, storytelling, and cultural embodiment, the presenters demonstrate how community-led processes create spaces for connection, truth-telling, and resistance. These methods affirm what many Indigenous communities know: that healing is not individual, but relational- tied to land, community, ancestry, and collective memory.
The presentation will explore how these circles have been adapted and facilitated across diasporic and local contexts, fostering cultural safety, emotional regulation, and deep listening. It will also highlight how Aboriginal and Palestinian communities are reclaiming mental health care by rejecting Western clinical models that fragment experience and by reviving traditions that prioritise community, spiritual integrity, and cultural continuity.
The presentation addresses the importance of validating and utilising indigenous knowledge in collective healing to avoid epistemological violence.
This work is a call for deeper trans-Indigenous solidarity, reminding us that while our geographies may differ, our struggles and strengths often mirror one another. It is also a testament to the power of Indigenous-led models of care in rebuilding systems that centre dignity, resistance, belonging and indigenous knowledges.
Submitted in full respect of Indigenous leadership, this abstract represents a participatory, decolonial and culturally grounded partnership, with both presenters deeply embedded in their communities and in the work of collective healing.
Three Key Learnings:
1. Understand how collective healing practices grounded in land, community, and ancestral connection offer culturally safe alternatives to Western mental health models, supporting pathways to Indigenous wellbeing.
2. Explore the use of healing circles and yarning circles as powerful tools for truth-telling, emotional regulation, and restoring cultural identity in both local and diasporic communities.
3. Recognise the importance of Indigenous-led models of care and the validation of cultural knowledges in preventing epistemological violence and enabling communities to walk forward in strength, resistance, and relational flourishing.
Biography
Ziyad Serhan is the Managing Director and CEO of Educaid Australia, a national organisation specialising in culturally responsive mental health education, suicide prevention, and wellbeing across CALD and faith-based communities. A recognised leader in the wellbeing space, Ziyad is an educator, counsellor and a seasoned facilitator in mental health first aid and suicide intervention, having delivered over 100 training programs. Ziyad has led large-scale, community-informed projects nationwide, and has presented at national and international conferences. Drawing on his Palestinian heritage and work in education, Ziyad advocates for decolonised, community-led approaches to mental health, collective healing, and systems reform.
