Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this website contains the names and images of people who have passed
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this website contains the names and images of people who have passed
Barwon South West
Regional Aboriginal Justice Advisory Committee
With an Aboriginal population of 4,475, the Barwon South West region accounts for approximately 9% of Victoria’s total Aboriginal population.
The RAJAC Executive Officer works across the region’s nine Local Government Areas: Colac-Otway, Corangamite, Glenelg, Greater Geelong, Moyne, Queenscliff, Southern Grampians, Surf Coast and Warrnambool. Local Aboriginal Justice Action Committees (LAJACs) are established in the Warrnambool, Geelong and Glenelg areas.
There are five Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations in the region: Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative (Geelong), Gunditjmara Aboriginal Co-operative and Kirrae Health Service (Warrnambool), Windamara Aboriginal Corporation (Heywood and Hamilton), and Dhauwurd Wurrung Elder and Community Health Service (Portland).
You can contact the Barwon South West RAJAC Executive Officer, Jye Walker.
Ph: 0421 598 445
E: Jye.Walker@justice.vic.gov.au
Ebony Hickey (Chairperson)
Ebony Hickey is a Gulidjan woman who’s been able to merge her passion and obligations around Country, Kin, Culture, Language , Art & Story into a career in an Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation. In her daily roles she navigates and delivers supports and services bound in cultural strengthening as the manager of the Colac Aboriginal Gathering Place.
Both her lived and professional experience gives Ebony a comprehensive understanding of social, physical, environmental, economic, and cultural strengths and challenges affecting not only Aboriginal peoples but service sectors of which the Barwon South West Regional Aboriginal Justice Advisory Committee landscape work in. Ebony’s spent many years in a Community Development advocating to ensure self-determined and place-based initiatives ensuring our Country and Community’s needs and assertions are heard.
Ebony’s experience in the ACCO space working for Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative, being on the Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation Board, holding the RAJAC and Dhelk Dja Chairperson roles for the Barwon South West also lends her to maintaining relationships with Community and executive stakeholders from Aboriginal and Government Organisations at a Statewide level.
Ebony’s a firm believer of nation building and that we need to proactively and consistently improve cultural understanding by resetting relationships/situations and way’s of communicating. The relationships that we have need to be bound in strength and reframing deficit, constantly checking our own privilege and bias so that we can have a solid process for dealing with complex intercultural and colonial challenges we face in the Aboriginal sector. Ebony’s practical community led ways of working ensure we’re all better placed to discuss and address the actual challenges our Barwon South West communities experience.