First Nations Collaborative: Youth Well-Being
The following blog is from our Collaborative member Anthony Satrick who facilitated a First Nations Collaborative workshop in early July where we discussed children in out-of-home care.
Swimming the River
The dialogue “Swimming the River" was designed to ensure that people had a voice in a safe place as we ignited a yarn around our small people (children). It’s a story of great significance as they are our future leaders and bearers of our existence as we evolve from our dream time to what we now see as chaos, “a forever changing world”.
Leaders from across our community-controlled organisations, including state government representatives, joined in this process to unpack and share knowledge, wisdom and lived and worked experience to understand the story of our small people in “out-of-home care”.
This story, as we know, is overwhelming given the high number of young people from the Far North Region who are disconnected from family and misplaced from their communities of origin. This whole process is only deepening the wounds of systemic racism and represents another generation of genocide today.
However, in this dialogue, we embraced our greatest strength of all—understanding our identity and recognising our motivation for change, which provided a strong platform to feel a sense of empowerment through our belonging.
With this strengths-based approach, each beacon/ inspirator/ambassador acknowledged that they have the solutions to drive change for our young people by reflecting on the roles that they play within the community, including their roles and responsibilities in their respective organisations.
Our Cultural Responsibility
The framework of our reflective practice focused on 3 key areas:
Maintain
Increase
Explore
The purpose of the reflection with the group was to see what we are doing well (maintain) understand what we want to do more of (increase) and then we wanted to go next (explore). This process fosters learning and encourages investment in change.
A powerful aspect of this approach is recognising that all small people learn and thrive more effectively when the wider community collaborates. By bringing together strengths, experiences, and resources, we embody “The Better Together Approach.”
