Navigating the spaces in between at the AIATSIS Summit 2022
We were honoured to have had our abstract Strong Relationships for Strong Country accepted as part of the AIATSIS 2022 Summit. The Summit this year had more than 1000 delegates, of which 700 were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from all over Australia and the Torres Strait. There were more than 300 speakers covering five streams each day with First Nations peoples making up 75 per cent of the speakers.
Our team included (R-L below), Doyen Radcliffe, Regional Manager Western, Keisha Miller, Impact and Strategy, Tania Liddle, Senior Community Development Officer NT/SA, Ginibi Robinson, Impact and Strategy and Eddie Miles, Senior Community Development Officer Eastern. The team came together face to face for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic to support each other and present as a panel to a group of approximately 80 Summit delegates about our First Nations’ self-determined approach to community development.
Sharing our collaborative work with First Nations’ communities on their chosen projects and long-term dreams, the team wove together the culturally strong elements of our Community Development Framework and processes with a strong narrative and storytelling. Relationships are always at the core of this work, including our obligations and relationships with Country. Our engagements with First Nations communities are relational, interconnected, and holistic, our approach is fluid and non-linear and yet still meets shared goals and aspirations. Yarning and storytelling continue beyond the formal processes, with this approach we maintain and grow our rich and deep relationships with communities and Country.
Our presentation and how we engage with communities seamlessly connected with the theme of the 2022 Summit. As AIATSIS CEO, Craig Ritchie said in his opening address, ‘The story of our lives as individuals and as communities and as nations happens between these points (30 years since the handing down of the Mabo decision), as we take up the theme of this year’s summit – navigating the spaces in between events and places and times. Navigating those spaces means that our focus is less on objects, trying to understand their detail, and much more on processes of interaction and relationship among and between those objects.’
The 2022 AIATSIS Summit opened on Kabi Kabi Country with a smoking ceremony led by Elder Maurice Mickelo. The first incredibly powerful plenary session of the Summit included a performance honouring the Yidaki masters of Eastern Arnhem by local musician, artist, and cultural knowledge holder Lyndon Davis (below).
As delegates, we were immersed in the diverse richness of First Nations excellence, highlighting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing and seeing the world, continued connections and knowledges utilising innovative technologies, decolonising practices and processes and celebrating strengths.
Our highlights were many and we have come away inspired, connected, and invigorated by old connections and the making of many new ones. We shared the space and listened to deep First Nations storying of resilience, cultural strengths and language through visual arts and music; First Nations led heritage protection; diverse and powerful conversations about Treaty, Native Title and Sovereignty and the stark reminder of the need for trauma informed culturally strong healing practices to elevate the experiences and voices of Stolen Generations survivors, families and descendants.
We look forward to continuing to share our Community Development work, the voices of the communities we engage with and our research as we grow and learn and engage and strengthen connections and relationships, making new ones from this and future AIATSIS Summits.