Our Story – Gunawirra

Our Vision

To empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, families and communities to develop to their full potential. Gunawirra’s vision for Australia is respect and value for Aboriginal culture and history and a high quality of life for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It is acknowledgement of past wrongs and working together for a better future for all Australians. Gunawirra’s vision is where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are connected and proud of their spiritual core and cultural base.

“I feel very honoured to be leading an organisation which strives to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I am passionate about improving quality of life for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their communities and moving Gunawirra forward as a professional organisation, rich in culture. I aim to give our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children the best start they need for a good education, a healthy lifestyle and a connection and belonging to their heritage and culture.”

Graham Toomey | CEO at Gunawirra

Our Beginning

Gunawirra was formed in 2008 in a Karawee karawee, a gathering of concerned people at the Grail Centre in North Sydney. Aboriginal representatives and elders from around NSW and Sydney, as well as 22 professionals from psychiatry, psychology, social work and psychoanalytic therapy pooled their ideas on how to prevent and reduce harm to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, their families and their communities.

The group identified the need for a coordinated and multi-faceted approach to break the cycle of physical, emotional, alcohol and substance abuse and domestic violence linked to poor mental health. The group saw the involvement of parents and children as a crucial strategy for well-being within Aboriginal families. The group focused on the importance of child development in the first five years and the value of providing intensive, purposeful, high-quality child-focused services.

What We Do

At Gunawirra, we are aware how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been cut off from access to aspects of their culture that might have helped them to heal from trauma.

Gunawirra is predicated on two gifts from ancient Aboriginal peoples: The Dreaming and Healing Circles. We combine symbolic psychoanalytic thinking and other western therapeutic methods, with the ancient form of the The Dreaming and Healing Circle to help restore the internal world for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mothers and children. From The Dreaming and Healing Circles we gain ideas of how trauma was treated and the roots of how we treat trauma today. The animating spirit of all Gunawirra projects is creating a space in which to listen, a space where the voices of traumatised children, parents and teachers can be heard, in a way that gives those voices relevance.

Aboriginal Culture

The Dreaming

In the ancient contents of The Dreaming Aboriginal people imbued their external world and events with meaning from their internal world; they created boundaries for this meaning; symbols for it. Gunawirra observes psychoanalytic therapy as symbolising in much the same way as The Dreaming.

Healing Circles

The most ancient form of treating trauma known to every Aboriginal group as Healing Circle or Dadirri. This process is a ritualised form of ‘deep soul listening’ where the community sat together, listening to the pain of another. Healing Circles are an empathic psychic action, now known as psychotherapy.

Our Vision

Our Beginning

What We Do

Aboriginal Culture

Company

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