Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander support

Uncle Milton Walit: The Yarning Circle started, the Elders here said to me, “Well Uncle you know the yarning so why don’t you go ahead and do it?” You always treat it as a spiritual place and you’ll experience that if you walk in and as you come draw near to it, you’ll feel the energy of the spirit entering your body. It’s got to accept you, from here.

Maurice Woodley: Traditionally for over 60,000 years or as I like to believe, since the beginning of time, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have sat down and talked through things.

Valentine Matthew Brown: It gives a place where the patients can come out of the hospital and come down here and feel safe and they can just yarn up and talk and also just get out of that hospital setting. Even us staff members, it was for our own healing as well and it’s a little bit of a way of sharing the rest of our culture with the rest of non-indigenous community as well.

Maurice Woodley: With the expansion of the Ipswich Hospitals, we’ve identified that site now needs to be utilised as an entrance to our biggest service for the community. A lot of work has gone into finding a new space for the Yarning Circle and a lot of work has gone into the design, which we’ll expand and create a larger space for people to come together and meet and yarn.

Steve Dunn: We had a good, broad range of specialists, we had structural engineers, hydraulic engineers, electrical engineers, wonderful industrial designers, lots of technical complexities. Taking on that role of what was previously there and giving significance to something that’s new, that comes from our traditional owners, really is a privilege to be involved.

Maurice Woodley: We’ll be using as much of the materials down in the existing Yarning Circle to be relocated up here. For years we’ve had keepers of the rocks, message sticks. So, the spirit, the energy, and the knowledge, that was shared in that space stays within those items. So, we’re going to be using as much as we can up in the new space, to continue that connection.

Valentine Matthew Brown: We really looked back onto our Elders for that consultation, and what has not worked in the past and what can we do to make things work in the future.

Steve Dunn: From the brief and the consultation through the design, and into construction and occupation, having the Traditional Owners part of that all the way through and having that sense of ownership over the place, over the garden, its pivotal. Every step of the way.

Maurice Woodley: Having cultural aspects included in First Nations health and wellbeing goes a really long way to closing the health gaps that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people face. We actually need to look at the system as a whole, the models of care, the models of services, and see how we can make changes to incorporate health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Valentine Matthew Brown: If we can share our culture and our knowledge, with non-indigenous people, hopefully we can bridge that gap and break that cycle of stigma and trauma that happened to our people in the past.