Latest news with #Dunghutti
SBS Australia
07-07-2025
- Health
- SBS Australia
‘Stick with it': Greg Inglis leads national mental health push for mob
A powerful new mental health campaign is putting visibility, connection, and culture at the centre of healing – and it's led by NRL great and Dunghutti man Greg Inglis. Launched through his mental health organisation, the Goanna Academy, the Stick With It campaign invites people to write messages of strength, remembrance or hope on sports tape - a small gesture aimed at sparking big conversations. "No matter what you're going through – even if it feels tough or you're not sure about the process – we want people to stay with it,' Inglis said. "There's always a light at the end of the tunnel." The campaign comes as new figures show more than one in three Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults report having a current mental health condition, a rate significantly higher than for non-Indigenous Australians. Standing in front of a mural in Redfern covered with hundreds of handwritten messages, Inglis reflected on the significance of making mental health visible. "We all bandage up injuries you can see - but mental health is invisible,' he said. "This tape, these messages, they make it real. People wrote for the next person, someone they lost, or about their own struggles. It's powerful." Greg Inglis places a message on a mural in Redfern covered with handwritten notes, part of the Stick With It campaign raising awareness for mental health in First Nations communities. The Stick With It initiative is part of a broader movement by the Goanna Academy to break down stigma in First Nations communities and to support young people through targeted education and cultural connection. "I used to say I was okay, but I wasn't,' Inglis said. "Sharing my story helps others realise they're not alone. "We have to look after ourselves, so we can look after the next generation." South Sydney Rabbitohs star and Bundjalung and Yuin man Cody Walker, an ambassador for the Goanna Academy, also threw his support behind the campaign. "Mental health affects everyone – all communities, across the whole country,' Walker said. "Seeing people come together to write messages for strangers – that could be the thing that helps someone get through the day." He said campaigns like this are vital in communities where suicide rates remain alarmingly high. "You never know what someone's going through,' Walker said. "But the Goanna Academy is giving mob the tools - strategies to work through mental health struggles, and ways to support others too. That's what makes it so important." The campaign will also roll out across the NRL, with players set to wear Stick With It tape during Round 22 as a show of solidarity. "It's a great initiative, and I'm proud to be part of it," Walker said. The Goanna Academy is aiming to raise $500,000 to expand its reach across schools and regional communities - enabling more programs, more ambassadors, and more sustained support. "I don't believe in just visiting a community once,' Inglis said. "Mental health takes time. That's why we return, we follow up, we build real connections." For Walker, the message is simple: dream big, even through the struggle. "I always tell kids: follow your dreams,' he said. "I've had my challenges, but I never gave up. That's what this is about, showing people they're not alone, and not giving up on themselves." As NAIDOC Week continues across the country, Inglis said the campaign reflects what this year's theme – 'The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy' – is all about. "This is about legacy. This is about looking after ourselves so we can be here for the next generation,' he said. "If we can change a life – or save one – then we're doing our job." 13YARN: 13 92 76 Lifeline: 13 11 14 Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636
SBS Australia
23-06-2025
- Business
- SBS Australia
First Nations graduates master the next generation of business leadership
Listen to Australian and world news, and follow trending topics with SBS News Podcasts . William Trewlynn is a proud Anaiwan, Dunghutti, and Gomeroi man. He's also the co-founder of YarnnUp, an Aboriginal Change Agency, specialising in cultural consulting, training and storytelling. "We refer to YarnnUp as, ancestral intelligence. We've created a framework which applies First Nations knowledge systems into our business practices. And it's having huge impacts from our partners all the way down to our communities." Alongside his business-partner, William leads a 14-strong team of strategic consultants and creatives. He is part of the first cohort to have graduated from the Master of Indigenous Business Leadership, delivered by Monash University and the William Cooper Institute in 2023. "It was an opportunity to engage in education that was designed for mob by mob. It provides pathways for communities, which I think at times is complex and hard. Secondly, it was about visibility. I think when you think about First Nations engagement, you think about First Nations leadership, it's done with a Western kind of ideology. And this for me was a way to reframe how do we define leadership in this country." The Master of Indigenous Business Leadership program is now in its fifth year. It's co-designed and led by Indigenous business leaders, Elders and academics. Tristan Kennedy is a proud Noongar man and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Indigenous, at Monash University. "Foregrounding Indigenous knowledges, Indigenous perspectives and Indigenous wisdom in tackling curriculum content, designing curriculum content, and establishing outcomes really makes it relevant and meaningful." According to Supply Nation which provides Australia's leading database of verified Indigenous businesses, the contribution of Indigenous business to the Australian economy is around 16 billion dollars. Kate Russell is a proud Awabakal woman and the founder of Supply Nation. "There's so much that goes beyond dollars when talking about Indigenous businesses, a diverse business sector strengthens social cohesion and honours the cultural heritage of this country. When Indigenous businesses are included, we see more culturally safe workplaces, more partnerships built on respect and more decisions that reflect community priorities." This year's graduating class includes 17 students from more than 20 communities across the country. Kaley Nicholson is a 2025 graduate with family lines throughout Victoria and into New South Wales. She has also recently been elected to the First Peoples' Assembly of Victoria. She says she is excited about embracing First Nations knowledge - and cultivating the next generation of business leaders. "There is nothing more self-determined or self-determining than having your own business. You make every decision, the success and failure of that business really rests on your shoulders. And so that's an incredibly daunting thing to think about, but also it's so freeing."
The Guardian
04-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
A scuffle in the lolly aisle. The sickening death toll climbs. Another family face gut-wrenching grief
Five years ago thousands of Australians defied Covid restrictions to pour on to the streets of our cities and towns as part of the global Black Lives Matter movement. The protests here highlighted the appalling rates of Aboriginal people dying in police and prison custody. One death in particular became a rallying point: that of David Dungany Jr, who died while being restrained, pleading that he could not breathe, in similar circumstances to George Floyd in the US. The 26-year-old Dunghutti man, who had diabetes and schizophrenia, was in Long Bay jail hospital in November 2015 when five guards stormed his cell after he refused to stop eating a packet of biscuits. Dungay, known to his family as Junior, was dragged to another cell, held face down and injected with a sedative. In harrowing footage later shown to the coroner and partly released to the public, Junior said 12 times that he couldn't breathe before losing consciousness and dying. Junior's family – especially his mum, Leetona, and nephew Paul Silva – have since been catapulted into representing a movement whose ranks are continuously swelled by more grieving Aboriginal families, all of them forced to deal with alienating and opaque processes of police 'investigation', and coronial inquests that take years to get to court, more years to decide what happened to their loved ones, and then all the years after which nothing appears to change. In Junior's case, the coroner heard that medical staff at Long Bay had failed for periods up of up to eight minutes to perform basic CPR. They had then forgotten to remove the safety cap from resuscitation equipment, which came off in Junior's mouth. The inquest took four years for the coroner to find that while the nurse who administered the sedative might be referred to a professional standards review, none of the guards who restrained Junior should face disciplinary action as their 'conduct was limited by systemic efficiencies in training'. As we stood outside the court that day, an aunty asked: 'How much training do they need to stop killing our people?' On the streets in 2020, people held up placards with the number 432. At that time, it was our best calculation of the number of Aboriginal people who had died in custody since the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody in 1991. New placards will be needed for this weekend's rallies in protest at yet another death in custody, in an Alice Springs supermarket last week. The number now stands at 597. Kumanjayi White, a 24-year-old disabled Warlpiri man from Yuendumu died after being restrained by police in the confectionery aisle at the Coles supermarket. According to the Northern Territory police assistant commissioner Travis Wurst, two plainclothes officers were in Coles about 1.10pm when they 'were alerted to a confrontation' between Kumanjayi and a security guard. After being restrained by the officers, Kumanjayi stopped breathing. He was taken to Alice Springs hospital where he was pronounced dead about an hour later. Kumanjayi had disabilities and was living away from his community in supported accommodation. His unnecessary death is a 'tragic case at the intersection of disability and race', the family's lawyer, George Newhouse of the National Justice Project, told Guardian Australia. The family, who are sadly experienced in navigating the nightmare world of police, media and the coronial process, have called for an independent investigation – meaning they want it to be conducted by anyone other than the NT police. Given their years of deeply negative interactions with the NT police, it's understandable. This is the same police force that shot dead the Warlpiri teenager Kumanjayi Walker in Yuendumu 2019. The same police force in which Alice Springs officers, including those in leadership roles, were revealed at his inquest in 2022 to have exchanged racist, sexist and homophobic text messages. The same police force alleged to have used military-style tactics in policing, amid allegations of the use of excessive force. The same police force in which the TRG elite group, now disbanded, bestowed a racist mock-award known as the 'Coon of the Year' on the officer who behaved 'most like an Aboriginal'. The winner was given a club and made to wear a toga. You can see why they might mistrust the outcome of that investigation. The federal minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, has said an independent investigation 'may be warranted'. The NT Labor opposition leader, Selena Uibo, said she hoped it was 'something that could be considered'. But Wurst has already ruled it out. The family has also called on the federal government to convene an Indigenous-led independent oversight body to supervise the investigation of First Nations deaths in custody as a matter of urgency. And, 'given the mistrust that exists between the family, First Nations community and the police, it is incumbent on police to show close family members the CCTV and body worn footage of the incident as soon as possible', Newhouse told Guardian Australia. The findings in the Walker inquest were due to be handed down in Yuendumu on 10 June. They will now be postponed while the community comes to terms with yet another senseless violent death involving the NT police. Late on Tuesday a former Coles employee came forward to say he'd known Kumanjayi White and had seen him in the shop from time to time. Gene Hill told the ABC he used to spot Kumanjayi wandering the aisles and would 'simply go up to him and grab the products off him and just explain to him that it's got to be paid for'. He suggested that Coles hire more Indigenous staff with local language skills and better support Aboriginal shoppers with disabilities. Also on Tuesday, Coles finally broke its silence on the matter. A spokesperson said the supermarket was 'deeply saddened' and would assist police with their investigations. Almost a week after Kumanjayi White's death in the lolly aisle, it seems a thin response from a company proud of being 'one of the largest private sector employers of Indigenous Australians', according to its website and its reconciliation action plan. One wonders what its chief executive and shareholders think of the optics of Coles now being permanently linked to an Aboriginal man's death involving police. As in 2020, rallies are being planned for this weekend in capital cities around the nation, to mourn the loss of another young Aboriginal person, to support another family devastated by the ongoing obscenity of carceral violence. 'This is gut wrenching pain. It is sickening. The kind that stops you form eating and keeps you up at night,' Samara Fernandez-Brown, Kumanjayi Walker's cousin, said in a statement. 'I can't believe this has happened again to a young Warlpiri nan, and I am so deeply saddened by the gross injustice of how Kumanjayi White was treated. Absolutely disgraceful. 'Has our community not gone through enough?' Lorena Allam is descended from the Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay nations of north-western NSW. She is the industry professor of Indigenous media at Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology, Sydney
