Biographies & Abstracts A-E
Professor Muriel Bamblett is a Yorta Yorta woman who has been employed as the Chief Executive Officer of the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency since 1999. From 1997-99 Muriel was the Chairperson of VACCA and from 1998-2008 was the Chairperson of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, the peak agency representing Indigenous Child and Family Services nationally. Muriel is active on many boards concerning children, families and the Indigenous community, including being a Member of the Victorian Children's Council; a Ministerial appointed representative on the Australian Families and Children Council; a Community Member on the Victorian Youth Parole Board; and a Board Member of the Aboriginal Community Elders Service.
Muriel has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the 2003 Robin Clark Memorial Award for Inspirational Leadership in the Field of Child and Family Welfare; and was awarded an AM (Membership in the General Division) in the 2004 Australia Day Honours for her services to the community. In 2008 Muriel was a participant at the Prime Minister's 2020 Summit and in 2009 LaTrobe University appointed Muriel as an Adjunct Professor in the School of Social Work and Social Policy within the Faculty of Health Sciences.
Kaiyu Moura Bayles is a Wonnarua, Wirri, and Wakka Wakka woman, the daughter and granddaughter of proud Aboriginal activists, freedom fighters and change makers, mother of five sons, a poet, singer, and songwriter. Growing up in Redfern (the Black heart of Sydney), Kaiyu was challenged in many ways. After being abducted walking home from school at 6 years old, keeping it a secret for a decade, Kaiyu was challenged with mental health issues, drug abuse, running away from her past and the pain of her people.
As a young girl in the city, Kaiyu wanted nothing more than to live the way her people did before the boats arrived. Thankfully, her family moved away from the city and she began to learn the culture she’d longed for. Since then Kaiyu has retreated from the rat race, living off the ocean, raising her kids on country (including off grid with newborns) and making time to learn as much culture as she can. “Culture is the key to the survival of our species and the earth”. Kaiyu has given permission for this image of her father Tiga to be used.
Lara Bennett and Deidre Currie, Kids Caring for Country: Building Resilience and Connection in Defining our Lore. Deidre Currie is a Minjungbal/Nunduwal woman and Lara Bennett a Wiradjuri Woman. They are International Women’s Day award recipients. Kids Caring For Country and Learning Our Way Program is a whole of family grassroots cultural healing and community recovery program.
Connection to Country, Culture and Lore is a way to replace current systemic frameworks that have caused isolation, powerlessness and trauma. Incorporating programs that structurally contain the contemporary Indigenous societal perceptions has proven to build resilience, wellbeing and loving connection to all things. Kinship, Relatedness and Caring for people are fundamental to Indigenous ways of being in the world. Kids Caring for Country whole of family playgroup has been designed planned and delivered by the local Tweed Valley Indigenous community. Having a program that is designed from Indigenous philosophies, worldviews and practices in effect weaves interconnectedness and a sense of relatedness amongst the group and with all things that are meaningful. This program has been so successful it is now being funded to become an evidence based program so that the framework can be used in any community.
Professor Harry Blagg is the Associate Dean (Research),at the School of Law, University of Western Australia. Harry will speak on “Indefinite detention meets colonial dispossession: Indigenous youths with foetal alcohol spectrum disorders in a white settler justice system”.
Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) is a non-diagnostic umbrella term encompassing a spectrum of disorders caused by prenatal alcohol exposure. This article reports on a qualitative research in three Indigenous communities in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia, intended to develop diversionary pathways for Indigenous young people with FASD at risk of enmeshment in the justice system. Rates of FASD in some parts of the West Kimberley are comparable to the highest identified internationally. A diagnosis of FASD amplifies the chances of Indigenous youth being caught up in the justice system in Western Australia, including indefinite detention in prison if found unfit to stand trial. A fresh diversionary paradigm is required. Employing a postcolonial perspective, we explore issues surrounding law and justice intervention - and non-intervention - in the lives of Indigenous children and their families. The FASD problem cannot be uncoupled from the history of colonial settlement and the multiple traumas resulting from dispossession: nor can solving the problem be isolated from the broader task of decolonising relationships between Indigenous people and the settler mainstream. The decolonising process involves expanding the role of Indigenous owned and place-based processes and services embedded in Indigenous knowledge.
Rebecca Blore is a proud Anaiwan woman from Uralla NSW. Rebecca now resides in Evans Head NSW with her partner and 3 children. Her current work role is Family Development Worker for Brighter Futures and has been in this role for just over 2 years. Rebecca holds a first class Honors Degree in Psychology and has undertaken professional development training in a variety of areas since joining the Brighter Futures team: Child Protection, Case Management, Domestic and Family Violence, Trauma, Child Sexual Assault, Cultural Awareness and Mental Health. Rebecca has a special interest in Trauma and will look toward undertaking further studies in this area to best support Aboriginal Families and their children toward healing and prevention. Rebecca is presenting for Brighter Futures with Michelle Laurie.
Michelle Laurie is a mother who is devoted to her 4 children, work and her studies to become a Trauma Specialist Counsellor. Michelle has been working for the past 11 months with families in a Case Management role with Brighter Futures CoNC. For self-care she connects to country, she loves visual arts and loves to spend time with her children which keeps her grounded. Michelle is serious about helping families create the best environments for their children to thrive. Everybody has a story and Michelle is curious and invests in making somebody’s day a little brighter
The Brighter Futures presentation increases your understanding of the program model and how we best provide the targeted support to meet the needs of vulnerable families within the Far North Coast footprint. The program is a voluntary intensive case management program, strength based, child centred, family focused and is a coordinated, integrated program.
Our aims are to:
Reduce child abuse and neglect by reducing the likelihood of family issues escalating into crisis within the child protection system,
Support the families to achieve long term benefits for children by improving intellectual development, educational outcomes and employment chances,
Improve parent/child relationships and the capacity of parents to build positive relationships and raise stronger, healthier children,
Break intergenerational disadvantage.
Our staff respectfully engage and build trusting relationships to empower families. Our work facilitates self-determination, resilience, social and cultural inclusion. All interactions acknowledge the strengths of the families to best meet their collective and individual needs.
Nyoongar man Mervyn Eades is the CEO of the Ngalla Maya Aboriginal Corporation; the organisation he founded and developed to respond to the high rates of illiteracy, lack of educational qualifications and high joblessness rates among former inmates. From the age of 13 to 31, Mervyn was in and out of juvenile detention and prison. He lost an 18 year-old brother to a death in prison custody.
Mervyn was recognised in 2016 with the Eddie Mabo Award for Social Justice at the National Indigenous Human Rights Awards. Ngalla Maya provides training, education, mentoring for former inmates and secures them jobs.
Abstract: Western Australia has the nation’s highest incarceration rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the nation, and this rate is one of the world’s highest incarceration rates. The rate of incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait is increasing and contextually very little is being done to halt the disproportionate incarceration levels of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
The level of education among inmates is low. Contextually, the prison experience fails to restore hope, fails to rehabilitate people with healing, wellbeing and educational opportunities. Ngalla Maya Aboriginal Corporation, founded by Mervyn Eades, a former inmate, provides job training and secures jobs through partner organisations. Ngalla Maya also provides literacy and numeracy education. Ngalla Maya provides ongoing mentoring, long after participants secure employment.
In the last 18 months, Ngalla Maya has registered more than 180 former inmates into training programs with 70 of them graduated into pre-agreed employment. Ngalla Maya is Perth-based and recently expanded into WA’s south west, to Albany and Katanning. Ngalla Maya sponsors the Women’s Reintegration Program.
Ngalla Maya personnel visit juvenile detention centres and adult prisons, and three months prior prison-release assist individuals in their commitment to jobs training and education. Research demonstrates that Ngalla Maya individuals are unlikely to reoffend.
