Speaker Announcements – Fiona Carr & Elizabeth Rea

Alana is a Pakana (Tasmanian Aboriginal) woman from the north east coast of lutruwita (Tasmania), and more recently, the Bass Strait Islands of Cape Barren and Flinders Island. Alana is passionate about First peoples globally, specifically holistic health and wellbeing. She believes that the wellbeing and identity of First peoples is strongly centred around strong connections to land, culture, spirituality and each other.

She has over eleven years’ experience in research, research translation, community engagement, health education and clinical consultation. She has a background in Nutritional Medicine and completed a Master by Research with a focus on Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine use by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cancer patients and, more specifically, the disclosure of this use to their cancer healthcare professionals, and completed her PhD titled “Exploring Wellbeing from Indigenous Perspectives”. Her work focussed primarily on wellbeing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but also included a focus on the domains of wellbeing for Indigenous peoples in Canada, Aotearoa (New Zealand) and the United States. Alana’s work is grounded in decolonising research approaches, including Indigenist research methods with a strengths-based focus.

Alana is currently a Maurice Blackmore Research Fellow, in the National Centre for Naturopathic Medicine, at Southern Cross University. She is developing a research program that will centre around First Nations Australians traditional medicines and healing practices, aiming to protect and preserve these medicines for future generations, and improve accessibility for all First Nations communities across Australia. In her previous research, Alana found that First Nations peoples tended to use other traditional and complementary medicines when they were not able to access their own, to meet their holistic health and wellbeing needs. Advocating for the respectful inclusion of all these medicines in the Australian health sector, is an important part of addressing the overarching goals of her research program. Indeed, these lands we all live, work and thrive on are, and always will be, First Nations Australians land. The work that NCNM are facilitating by embedding Alana’s research program positions them as allies within this space and shows respect for the Traditional Owners of these lands.