CONVERSATION: Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing

Thursday 21 April, 6-7.30pm

View Inhabiting the Trace, a dynamic display of print-based works by Indigenous artists represented within the Berndt Museum collections and join Curator Jessyca Hutchens in conversation with Professor Pat Dudgeon and Professor Helen Milroy as they discuss Aboriginal health and well-being and the significance of art practice.

Inhabiting the Trace looks particularly at the role of print in telling generational stories and reflects the significance of art practice as an active means of continuing culture and enabling healing. This theme is particularly significant in the work of the late Peter Cameron, whose thinking, research, and artworks in relation to Indigenous concepts of health and society – ideas also developed through correspondence with Dr Anne Read and Professor Fiona Stanley while he was incarcerated in Casuarina prison in the 1990s – remain vital and visionary. This conversation between renowned Indigenous leaders in the field will consider the many ways that art practice can be vital to the well-being of ourselves and our communities and can communicate health and social concepts in powerfully resonant ways.

Professor Pat Dudgeon

Pat Dudgeon is from the Bardi people in Western Australia. She is a psychologist and professor at the Poche Centre for Aboriginal Health and the School of Indigenous Studies at UWA. 

Professor Helen Milroy

Helen Milroy is a descendant of the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia but was born and educated in Perth. She is Australia’s first Indigenous doctor and child psychiatrist. Currently Helen is the Stan Perron Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Perth Children’s Hospital and University of Western Australia and Honorary Research at the Telethon Kids Institute. From 2013-2017 Helen was a Commissioner for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and from 2017-2021 was a Commissioner with the National Mental Health Commission. In 2020, Helen was the joint winner of the Australian Mental Health Prize and named the WA Australian of the Year for 2021.Helen is also an artist and published author and illustrator of children’s books.

Dr Jessyca Hutchens

Jessyca is a Palyku woman, art historian, and curator at the Berndt Museum. 

------------------

Image: Opening night, Inhabiting the Trace, LWAG, 2022, Photograph by Ilkka K Photography. 

------------------

Please note:

Due to WA State Government Covid-19 safety regulations, upon entry you will be required to provide proof of vaccination or proof of your medical exemption.

Registration is essential and will be checked on arrival. The University is committed to ensuring the health and safety of our students, staff and visitors to our campus and as always, will comply with all public health advice of the State Government.