Kulila!

‘Kulila!’ (Pitjantjatjara) means ‘listen up!’ We are a group of people in Central Australia who want to bring emotions, feelings, and issues out in the open and get people talking about mental health. This is to help our families and communities make sense of what’s happening, talk about their feelings and ask for the right sort of help if they need it.

‘Uti Kulintjaku’ (Pitjantjatjara) means ‘to understand clearly.’ The Uti Kulintjaku project is part of NPY Women’s Council’s Ngangkari Program. At the centre of this mental health literacy project is a series of workshops with Ngangkari (traditional healers), senior Indigenous women, interpreters, and mental health workers. These workshops open up discussion around words, terms, concepts, and approaches to addressing mental health. Together, we are creating a shared language for Indigenous people and mental health professionals to talk about mental health. We believe that greater mental health literacy will lead to increased help-seeking and better communication between Indigenous people and mental health workers.

NPY Women’s Council (NPYWC) is a service delivery, advocacy and support organisation created by Anangu women from 28 remote communities in the cross-border region of Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia. NPYWC delivers services and programs working with Anangu to improve their health, wellbeing and safety.

The Ngangkari Program supports a dynamic group of Ngangkari (traditional healers) who are also highly respected artists, teachers, and health workers with immense cultural authority. As well as applying traditional skills as healers in their communities, they use their extensive knowledge of family history and Anangu culture to provide advice and guidance to Indigenous and non-Indigenous people working with their communities.

This is one of the Ma! series of crowdsourcing language documentation apps originally developed by Iwaidja Inyman (aka the Minjilang Endangered Languages Publications project) based at Minjilang, Croker Island, Northern Territory, Australia, with funding through the Indigenous Languages Support program of the Australian Government's Office of the Arts. Based on an original concept by Bruce Birch, the Ma! Series is the result of a collaboration between the Croker Island based Iwaidja Inyman team, the Pollen Interactive Digital Agency and designers David Lancashire Design.