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Share your knowledge, stories and experiences at IWC26

Present at the Indigenous Wellbeing Conference 2026

Apply to present at IWC 2026

Applications close Monday 6 April 2026

Together, IWC26 presenters will shape conversations, strengthen connections and advance Indigenous wellbeing

The Indigenous Wellbeing Conference brings together Indigenous leaders, practitioners, researchers, advocates and allies to share knowledge and explore Indigenous-led approaches to wellbeing.

In 2026, the conference will be held for the first time in Canberra on Ngunnawal Country, a powerful place for conversations about systems, community, culture and the future of wellbeing.

If you are passionate about Indigenous wellbeing and have insights, ideas, research, programs or lived experience to share, we invite you to present at IWC26.

Presenters come from across health, mental health, education, justice, policy, community services, research and culture. Together, we will explore Indigenous-led solutions that are grounded in Country, culture and community.

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What to Present at IWC26

We are seeking presentations that reflect real-world practice, lived experience, research and community knowledge related to Indigenous wellbeing.

The Conference Committee is particularly interested in presentations aligned to the following themes:

Click to expand the topics below.

 

1. Indigenous Leadership in Climate Adaptation and Country Protection

This topic explores how Indigenous communities are leading climate adaptation, disaster response, and long-term stewardship of Country through cultural knowledge, governance, and innovation. It recognises climate change as a wellbeing issue shaping housing, food and water security, cultural continuity, and intergenerational responsibility. Sessions highlight Indigenous-led approaches to planning, policy, and care for Country that draw on ancestral knowledge while building contemporary capability, centring strength, leadership, and continuity in climate-resilient futures.

2. Building Systems that Support Healing and Accountability

This topic examines the cumulative harms across health, justice, education, and child protection systems, and why decades of reform have failed to deliver meaningful change. Moving beyond surface level cultural safety, it focuses on accountability, safe truth-telling, and what repair looks like in practice. Sessions explore how systems can shift from consultation to responsibility, and from intent to measurable outcomes.

3. Beyond Healing: Sustaining Social and Emotional Wellbeing

Many Indigenous communities and workers carry unsustainable emotional and cultural loads. This topic shifts the focus from survival to sustainability by addressing burnout, workforce wellbeing, and the need for trauma-aware systems rather than trauma-aware individuals. It centres collective care, rest, joy, and regeneration as essential foundations for long-term social and emotional wellbeing.

4. Embedding, Scaling, & Protecting Indigenous Models of Care in Practice

This topic focuses on how Indigenous models of care are embedded, scaled, and sustained within real-world systems while protecting cultural integrity and authority. It explores challenges related to funding, commissioning, accountability, and workforce sustainability as models move beyond pilots. Sessions examine how Indigenous ownership, governance, and Indigenous-defined measures of success support longevity and impact, and how cultural authority can be maintained as reach expands. 

5. From Consultation to Consent: Restoring Community Authority in Decision-Making

This topic challenges consultation models that extract Indigenous knowledge while institutions retain control. It examines how decision-making authority can shift from governments and organisations back to Indigenous communities through consent, refusal, and veto as legitimate outcomes. Sessions address consultation fatigue, extractive co-design, and the importance of community-led timelines and priorities, centring participation defined by authority and control, not presence alone.

6. Lore, Statutory Law and Human Rights in Practice

This topic explores how Indigenous self-determination is exercised through Indigenous LORE, community governance, and engagement with statutory law and human rights frameworks. It examines the relationship and tension between cultural authority and state-based legal systems, and how rights are upheld or constrained in everyday settings such as health, justice, land management, and child protection. Sessions focus on community-led governance beyond legislation and sustaining momentum without exhausting communities through constant advocacy.

7. Education for Influence: Indigenous Pathways to Leadership and Decision Making

This topic reframes education as an Indigenous-led pathway to influence, leadership, and collective decision-making. It explores intergenerational learning, youth voice with care and consent, and education as a space for truth-telling, accountability, and repair. Sessions challenge checklist approaches to cultural safety and examine how education systems, under Indigenous guidance, can support agency, purpose, and long-term wellbeing.

8. Economic Sovereignty and Collective Prosperity

This topic moves the conversation from economic participation to ownership, control, and collective wealth. It explores Indigenous-led economic models grounded in culture and values, including procurement, supply chains, entrepreneurship, and digital enterprise. Sessions highlight how economic futures can strengthen community wellbeing when they prioritise sovereignty, sustainability, and shared prosperity over growth alone.

9. The Role of Culture, Arts and Story in Community Strength

This topic positions culture as foundational infrastructure for wellbeing, prevention, and continuity across generations. It explores how arts, storytelling, language, ceremony, and collective memory function as living systems of care, strengthening identity and belonging across Elders, adults, rangatahi or taiohi, and tamariki. Sessions highlight intergenerational models that transmit knowledge and cultural authority, and examine how Indigenous cultural and intellectual property is protected from misuse, misappropriation, and commodification across systems.

10. Reimagining Otherwise: Indigenous Futures Beyond Current Systems

This topic creates space to imagine Indigenous futures not limited by broken systems or inherited constraints. It centres Indigenous-led visions grounded in refusal, redesign, and radical imagination, asking what wellbeing systems and narratives might look like if built from Indigenous worldviews from the ground up. Sessions focus on strengthening Indigenous authority over future-making, including control of data, knowledge systems, technology, and narrative framing, to protect intellectual property and disrupt deficit narratives.

11. From Distress to Strength: Indigenous Approaches to the Primary Prevention of Mental Distress

This topic focuses on how Indigenous knowledges, relationships, and place-based practices prevent mental distress long before crisis or diagnosis. It explores primary prevention designed and led by Indigenous communities, centring culture, land, language, collective responsibility, and social determinants of wellbeing. Sessions highlight how whānau, hapū, iwi, Pacific peoples, and other Indigenous communities are shifting systems upstream into everyday settings, and how investment, measures of success, and workforce roles can be reoriented toward prevention grounded in Indigenous worldviews.


We welcome submissions from Indigenous and non-Indigenous presenters, and strongly encourage Indigenous-led and community-led presentations.

Why Present

Presenting at IWC26 gives you the opportunity to:

  • Share your work, research, program or story with a national and international audience
  • Contribute to Indigenous-led conversations about wellbeing
  • Connect with community leaders, practitioners and decision-makers
  • Inspire others through lived experience and practical knowledge
  • Build your professional profile and presentation experience

Whether you are working on the ground in community or in research, policy or practice, your perspective matters. 

Presentation Styles

(Click To Expand)
Oral Presentation

Deliver a 20 or 30-minute presentation followed by 5 minutes of questions.

Workshop Presentation
Facilitate a 90-minute interactive session focused on learning, discussion and participation.
Panel Presentation

Panel presentations bring together views from a group of presenters into a discussion of innovative ideas, current topics, and relevant issues. Each panel session will run for 90 minutes and will consist of at least 3 panel members.

Poster Display

Showcase your research or program through a printed poster displayed in the exhibition area, with a dedicated poster session in the program.

Important Dates

 

 

Presenter applications close Monday 6 April 2026
Notifications to presenters Tuesday 28 April 2026
Acceptances and registrations due Friday 8 May 2026
Program launch Thursday 14 May 2026
Conference dates Monday 12 & Tuesday 13 October 2026

Ready to Share Your Story?

Be part of a program that centres Indigenous voices and strengthens wellbeing across communities.

Submit your presentation proposal for IWC26 today.