This presentation explores Waminda’s Birrung Baabamarra approach to decolonising masculinity through an Aboriginal women-led framework grounded in culture, healing, and collective responsibility. Strong in matriarchal leadership, Birrung Baabamarra invites men to return to ways of being that honour Wiyanga Yanaga — grandmother’s lore — and to restore pre-colonial understandings of masculinity centred on relational leadership, accountability, kinship, and service to community.
Developed and guided with leadership from Aboriginal women, Birrung Baabamarra centres matriarchy in an Aboriginal women’s context. This positioning is intentional: it recognises that women hold deep knowledge of relational wellbeing, community safety, and the cultural expectations placed on men. Through this lens, the program supports men to unlearn colonial masculinities — those shaped by dominance, disconnection, and violence — and to reclaim cultural masculinities grounded in care, humility, and collective responsibility.
Importantly, this presentation positions decolonising masculinity not as the rejection of men, nor masculinity itself, but as a process of restoring balance, cultural connection and healthier pathways for men to walk within families and communities. Through Waminda’s Aboriginal women-led practice, the presentation highlights the importance of creating culturally safe spaces where men can reconnect to identity, emotional honesty, responsibility, mentorship and collective care.
The session concludes by offering a strengths-based vision for masculinity grounded in culture, courage, accountability, respect and community wellbeing. While centred in Aboriginal experiences, the presentation also speaks to broader societal conversations about men, healing and the need for alternative models of masculinity that move beyond dominance and disconnection toward relational and collective wellbeing.
Birrung Baabamarra stands as a reminder that genuine change requires more than compliance with mainstream structures. It requires making space for Aboriginal led knowledge systems, for women’s leadership, and for culturally grounded pathways that restore safety through cultural strength.