NAIDOC Theme 2025
NAIDOC Week 2025 celebrates its 50th anniversary with the theme: “The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy.” This theme honours the resilience of Indigenous communities, the foresight of their leaders, and the promising future led by young voices. It’s a call to empower the next generation to rise strong, guided by the wisdom of Elders and the strength of community.
Social & emotional wellbeing
For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait people, our wellbeing is collective and relational: our community, connection to country and culture all intertwines. The holistic concept of Social and Emotional Wellbeing (SEWB) reflects this sense of relationality and collectiveness. SEWB connects past, present, and future – it’s about who we are, where we come from, and who walks beside us.
Its important to also recognise that colonial settlement of this country has and continues to play a role in First Nations SEWB. Truth telling is an important part of our healing. The healing work we do, empowered by our allies and practitioners, must honour the legacy of survival and resistance, while building our strength and resilience.
The role of practitioners
Our health and wellbeing workforce play an integral role in helping us to close the gap. Embedding a SEWB framework in our practice ensures a culturally safe and strengths-based model of care. It allows First Nations clients to master their own healing and health journey that may be grounded in connection to Country, kinship, community, identity and spirit.
By embedding the domains of SEWB in the service we provide, we can nurture legacy, vision and strength in the First Nations clients, colleagues and services we support. Our non-Indigenous practitioners make up a significant component of our health workforce and can play a role beyond providing clinical care — through increasing our SEWB knowledge and practicing self-reflection and can better advocate, ally and empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples during NAIDOC and every week of the year.
Professional development & learning
For understanding and professional development to embed a SEWB model of care, we use NAIDOC week to remind practitioners that the WellMob website is available to support your learning and practice journey. WellMob’s Understanding social and emotional wellbeing links to a variety of different resources on how to implement a SEWB framework into practice, tools to use with First Nations clients focusing on the SEWB domains of wellbeing, and working with children including those in out-of-home care.
Along with other Wellmob Resource Sheets for Workers, they short-list the best resources on a range of topics to make it quick and easy for tie poor workers to find credible and useful content. There are many different resource types to choose from including webinars, podcasts, videos, websites and pdfs.
Working with our young people
By embracing and maintaining cultural traditions, Aboriginal young people contribute to the survival and growth of their culture, which has been practiced for thousands of years.
Strengthening cultural connection is crucial for Aboriginal young people for several key reasons:
Identity and Belonging
Connecting with culture helps young people develop a strong sense of identity, self-worth, and pride in who they are. It fosters a sense of belonging within their community and strengthens their personal and collective identity.
WellMob’s Resource Sheets for Workers has links to some great identity resources for practitioners:
Mental Health and Wellbeing
We know that for First Nations peoples, cultural connection is linked to better mental health outcomes (Mayi Kuwayu Study – ANU, 2025). Engaging in cultural practices, learning language, and taking part in community events can reduce stress, anxiety, and feelings of isolation.
A youth app developed by young people from Northern NSW has information about emotions and practical ways of managing them:
Resilience and Strength
A strong cultural foundation helps Aboriginal young people navigate challenges such as racism, discrimination, and intergenerational trauma. It provides them with the strength and resilience to face adversity.
Check out these resources that you can use to aid clients who are experiencing the impacts of racism:
Passing Down Knowledge
Strengthening cultural connection ensures that traditional knowledge, stories, language, and practices are passed down to future generations, preserving culture and heritage.
This link to a dictionary of language apps allows you to walk your client through downloading it onto their device:
Education and Opportunities
Understanding their history and culture can empower Aboriginal young people in their education and career pathways, giving them confidence and motivation to pursue their goals.
This practitioner app gives you a practical tool to use in-session to map out what, who and how your client stays strong then to do some goal setting that you can revisit:
Feel free to contact us for further information on the Wellmob website and eMHprac’s professional development activities.
About the author
