Tired of ‘liking’ without yarning? Where’s the critical discussion about cultural safety with First Nations Australians? I can’t get it in Academia, or ResearchGate, X, LinkedIn, BlueSkye, etc. I’m so sick of academics just posting links to their papers, re-posting links about their conferences, and just ‘liking’ without talking.

Will you help me bridge a gap between the bland academic papers and lived experiences of First Nations Australians? I read so many journal articles—my current annotated literature review is 500+ articles—but they don’t seem to affect our lives.

If cultural safety research isn’t affecting our lives, then it isn’t worth continuing to use taxpayer dollars to support academic snobbery.

Oh, and why me? I’m First Nations (Ngiyampaa) Australian. Yep, I know I don’t “look” Aboriginal, as I’m constantly reminded, but I’m fair dinkum about my cultural identity. Just because I don’t have the looks—don’t judge a book by its cover—I have the lived experiences from a family and society obsessed with telling me who I should be, feel, think, and act.

I’ve also spotted some big gaps in the Australian research sector. From my 20 years of research experience (ORCiD), I see honours and doctoral students struggling to make sense of cultural safety. The professors just want to do First Nations research for their ‘track record’ and get an Order of Australia. Lecturers just pull any old article out of the scholarsphere to feed to their bored students.

The real, critical, and debatable aspects of cultural safety are stifled by fear, recrimination, shaming, and ignorance.

In this safe digital space, bring your critical ideas about cultural safety and be unconstrained by your university, community, government, and mob. Try to back-up your ideas from published sources (doesn’t have to be academic, but open access please), pose considerate questions, and begin some yarns (chats) in the community. Looking forward to this journey with you on critical cultural safety analysis with First Nations Australians!🦘

Thanks for reading🦘