I am a proud Njikena Jawuru woman from the West Kimberley, WA. I am the Director of the Molly Wardaguga Research Centre, Faculty of Health at Charles Darwin University and an emerging nationally and internationally known leader on Indigenous health with novel ideas on ensuring that First Nations Australia’s a leading the research that that sustainable impacts that improve the health and wellbeing of my people. This is supported by more than 30 years experiences working in the Indigenous health sector. I have devoted myself to be a two-way interpreter of research between the academy and First Nations people and to use research as a mechanism for social, cultural and political change.  

My research is co-designed with families, communities and service providers and aims to improve health for First Nations Australians. My current research has a specific focus on ensuring that maternal and infant services are mother-child focused and are informed by an Indigenous epistemology and ontology. This involves describing and assessing the impact of community investment by empowering First Nation communities to actively be involved to redesign health services which are cultural safe, underpinned by First Nation values and provides an operational framework of First Nation relationality and connectedness to place, people, ceremony and improved health and wellbeing outcomes.