• Our project explores music as a primary cultural determinant of health for First Nations communities.

    Music is an enduring link with our ancestors, our Country, our languages. It links our past with our present and future. It holds the comfort of familiarity and belonging. Music is healing. It is strength. Music speaks to our communities and about them to others.

  • First Nations music is any music that First Nations People play and make. It can come from any genre or tradition, including our own original ones.

    First Nations music is expression, inclusion, creativity and survival. Music is oxygen – sustaining us. It is play - connecting us with ourselves and others. Music is medicine – healing us. It is temporary and timeless – releasing and grounded. Music is a sound of the earth, the ocean, wind, rain, thunder… all things in Country.

  • The title of our project The Remedy Project: First Nations Music as a Determinant of Health honours the role of music as a natural “remedy” in cultural healing and ceremony that has happened over Millennia in First Nations communities.

    It reflects the resolute strength of First Nations music and musicians despite historical and ongoing colonisation.

  • What do we mean by cultural and social determinants of health?

    Determinants of health are anything in our lives that affect our health and wellbeing for better or worse.

    Recognised First Nations cultural health determinants in Australia are things such as connection to our heritage, Country, Spirit, lore, kinship networks, community, and social and emotional wellbeing.

  • In this project, we recognise music as cultural action.

    Music is something that First Nations People have been practising for millennia to care for one another and Country, teach, communicate, lobby for change, resist, advocate, express, and heal. We adopt a strength-based approach to explore musical activity as a cultural strength and resource for promoting First Nations health, wellbeing, and healing.

Partner Organisations

Griffith University • University of the Sunshine Coast • University of Queensland • Edith Cowan University