The Tiwi Islands is situated approx. 100km north of Darwin and is home to approx. 2500 Tiwi people. A place rich in culture, language, history, and beautiful landscapes, Tiwi people generously and proudly share their knowledge, wisdom, art, elite sporting abilities, land and culture with the world. Despite this, Tiwi people have been deeply affected by colonisation and dispossession, and experience historically and to this day, some of the highest suicide rates in the world.
Led by Cathy Stassi, Mary Munkara, Ancilla and Francis-Xavier Kurrupuwu (Tiwi Elders) and Dr Josie Povey (Research Fellow, Menzies School of Health Research), this program represents a Tiwi led collaboration between Elders, young people, researchers, and health professionals to improve mental health and wellbeing. Established in 2018, the Ngawurrmangajirri group aim to “support Tiwi people to heal, by strengthening and caring for language and culture, ourselves, community, families, children and elders. We support people to come together, to heal on country and learn old ways and new ways. We share and learn our Tiwi language and culture. We promote respect, communication, and encourage people to check in with how they are feeling”, Ngawurramangajirri group, 2024. Since being established the group have co-designed, developed, and disseminated a number of digital mental health resources in Tiwi Language, which encourage healing, and connection to culture, language and others. This presentation will detail the landscape and context of the project, ways of working, outcomes and future directions of this work.
This presentation will showcase work from the Ngawurramangajirri (we care for each other) group, who co-design, develop and implement digital resources for wellbeing in Tiwi language. Resources such as a Tiwi-English dictionary and phrasebook for wellbeing terms, a Tiwi Elder story, Pwangajimawu (spider woman) embedded into AIMhi for Youth app and Wulaninga (calm sea calm wind) Meditation Story will be showcased. This presentation will cover the approach to co-design, production and evaluation of the resources, which strongly aligns with an holistic, social and emotional wellbeing approach to suicide prevention.
This presentation will also outline future work, including preliminary findings and resources emerging from the Ngawurramangajirri (we care for each other): Understanding resilience and peer support through a digital mental health co-design project with the Tiwi LGBTIQ+ community and a Talk to Text proof of concept prototype in Tiwi Language.