Who We Are

Our story: Balance by Shawana Andrews, Palawa (2020) ©

Balance across time, place and people through relationships, respect, reciprocity and responsibility

Learn about Balance

Our Story

Weenthunga was established in 2010 by a collective of First Nations and Settler Australian health professionals who identified the importance of a connected health workforce.

Our purpose is to uphold health sovereignty and progress health justice for First Nations people.

We see health sovereignty as being innate since Creation and interconnected to self-determination. In upholding health sovereignty we’re growing, nourishing and connecting the First Nations health, wellbeing and healing workforce.

We see health justice as being necessitated by invasion and the ongoing impacts of the colonial project. In progressing health justice, we’re building critical allyship and igniting transformational change across health and health education systems.

At Weenthunga, we work two-way. We’re valuing and practicing cultural humility and two-way working, demonstrating what’s possible when knowledge systems meet and mix.

Our Values

Our work is grounded by our values, the 4Rs + Resistance.

Relationships:

Genuine and lasting connections with, and interconnections between, people, communities and Country. We gift ourselves and each other space to honour, nurture, and deepen our relationships.

Respect:

Listening to people, communities and Country with the intent to understand, and thoughtfully responding when appropriate. We move through spaces purposefully and with cultural humility, centring our intentions to respectfully be and grow, individually and together.

Reciprocity:

A balanced, cyclical exchange shared between the act of giving and the act of receiving by people, communities and Country. Enacted in our work, relationships, and the roles we hold – teacher/learner, speaker/listener, thinker/doer, and so on – in reciprocity, we continue to show up.

Responsibility:

In acknowledging our obligations to people, communities and Country, we hold ourselves and each other accountable for our words, actions and inactions. We have a collective responsibility to back health sovereignty and progress health justice for First Nations people in so-called Victoria.

Resistance:

As First Nations people, we stand strong in our ways of knowing, being, doing, and continuing the legacy and fight of generations before us. Working two-way, we protest and act against ongoing assimilationist agendas, disrupting oppressive systems, structures, and minds.