Minister for Indigenous Australians, the Hon Ken Wyatt AM, MP, has today announced funding of around $2 million to twelve recipients, under the Indigenous Research Exchange initiative.

Minister Wyatt said the funding would provide for Indigenous-led projects that are a priority for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

CHMS is the administering organisation on a grant recently announced under this scheme. Titled: Repatriation, healing and wellbeing: understanding success for repatriation policy and practice, this project will use a Ngarrindjeri methodology (Yannarumi) to investigate healing and wellbeing as the priority and key indicator of success in repatriation and reburial, to support practice, develop protocols, and inform policy - nationally and internationally. The project team includes: Prof Daryle Rigney, Steve Hemming, and Amy della Sale (UTS), Cressida Fforde and Win Adam (ANU), Grant Rigney, Lawrie Rankine Jnr, Luke Trevorrow, Major Sumner (Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority), Ned David (Gur a Baradharaw Kod Torres Strait Sea and Land Council), Neil Carter (Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre), Dr Michael Pickering and Ms Shona Coyne (National Museum of Australia). The project will support the Ngarrindjeri reburial program and also comes out of the work of the broader Return, Reconcile, Renew, Indigenous repatriation research group – seewww.returnreconcilerenew.info

Dr Maya Haviland is involved with an additional project through this scheme entitled Following the Trade Routes, led by the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre, with a research team that includes people from KALACC and the South Australia Museum. The project will re-discover and revitalise the cultural networks, knowledge and authority of the once flourishing Indigenous Trade Routes and celebrate the significant objects exchanged from the western Kimberley through central Australia and into the Flinders Ranges.

Congratulations to all Indigenous Research Exchange grant recipients!