Twenty years in, and still learning.
As the Bouverie Centre reflects on 20 years of First Nations allyship, we do so with deep gratitude for the Elders, families, practitioners, students, and partners who have trusted us enough to walk alongside us.
This piece shares reflections from that journey, and recommits us to allyship grounded in relationship, accountability, and respect.
Walking together
Anniversaries invite celebration — but they also invite honesty. As the Bouverie Centre marks 20 years of First Nations allyship, one truth stands out clearly: allyship is not something you complete.
Walking Together: 20 years of First Nations Allyship was a celebration bringing together colleagues, partners and community members to recognise two decades of First Nations allyship across teaching, clinical practice, research and academic programs at the Bouverie Centre.
Allyship is a relationship practice. As our cultural leaders here show us, it is earned again and again — through showing up, deep listening, accountability, and through being willing to be uncomfortable, corrected, and changed.”
We’re honoured to welcome Senator Jana Stewart as our keynote speaker, alongside reflections from Professor Jenn McIntosh, Centre Director, The Bouverie Centre, Michael Donovan, Pro Vice Chancellor, La Trobe University, Aunty Darleen Chirstensen, Alumni and Cultural Consultant Workin’ with the Mob Clinic. Each speaker shared their own knowledge and experience from their time and connection with the Bouverie Centre.
Learning at the intersection of relationships, systems, and power
In family‑centred work, we sit at the intersection of relationships, systems, and power. Over time, it became clear that our usual ways of working were not enough. Supporting First Nations families and communities meant looking beyond the therapy room and engaging with history, culture, community, and connection. It meant acknowledging that harm can be systemic, and healing must be collective.
Senator Jana Stewart reflected on how Bouverie’s teaching named knowledge that First Nations communities have always held:
“What Bouverie gave me was the language and the frameworks for the work, the tools to name what I what I think I've been doing intuitively, actually, and to do it with more confidence, to understand that what I brought, the instincts, the watchfulness, the knowing, was not a deficit to be trained out of me, that it was the starting point.
….I remember sitting in a class here and being taught about systemic family therapy, about how you cannot understand the individual without understanding the system around them, about how the family is a unit, about how change in one part of the system creates change elsewhere. And like so many Mob who have trained at Bouverie, I remember thinking, our Mob have known this forever, systems theory. We've been thinking like that for over 60,000 years, and Bouverie just gave it a reading list.”
What sustains the journey
What has sustained this journey is generosity—of practitioners, families, students, Elders, and partners who have trusted us enough to walk alongside us, sometimes cautiously, sometimes critically, always with clarity about what matters.
Twenty years on, the work continues. Real allyship is not about standing at the centre of the story — it’s about ensuring the future is written together, in relationship, and with accountability.
For over twenty years, we have been careful in how we build and nurture allyship, there will be another twenty years at least. So, today, we recommit Bouverie to supporting First Nations leadership and sovereignty in family centred practice.
To our First Nations partners, colleagues, Elders, and families: thank you. Thank you for your generosity, your patience, your wisdom, and for letting us know when we’ve gotten it wrong, and when we are getting it “at least a bit more right”.
Learn more about our First Nations program history and shared wisdoms here.
Pictured above (Left to right)
Prof. Monica Thielking - Dean, School of Psychology & Public Health, La Trobe University
Liz George - Snr. Lecturer - Graduate Certificate in Family Therapy: First Nations
Prof. Jenn McIntosh - Centre Director, the Bouverie Centre
Sandra Nolan - First Nations - Partnerships, the Bouverie Centre
Alison Elliott - Cultural Consultant and Systemic Practice Consultant, the Bouverie Centre
Senator Jana Stewart
Aunty Darleen Christensen - Cultural Consultant, Workin' with the Mob Clinic, the Bouverie Centre
Assoc. Prof. Michael Donovan - Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous, La Trobe University
