Dr. Tjanara Goreng Goreng

Tjanara is a Wakka Wakka/Wulli Wulli woman from Central Queensland and carries the traditions of her clan through medicine practice, being a Songwoman and teaching Aboriginal Law & Spirituality to people throughout the world. Tjanara is a published poet, writer, performer of traditional song and dance and contemporary Murri artist who regularly facilitates Aboriginal Women’s Business workshops and Aboriginal Law,Culture & Spirituality workshops in Australia and overseas. For 30 years Tjanara has been working with groups and organisations in Australia and overseas in transformational leadership mentoring, cultural systemic change and sacred leadership.

Tjanara is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at University of Canberra and a PhD Researcher at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University. Tjanara has been an academic at five Australian Universities, and a Director at two including as Foundation Director at Charles Sturt University, NSW and as Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Education at the University of Melbourne. Tjanara has extensive public service background in the Federal Government and State Government public services as a Director and Senior Policy Advisor in Prime Minister & Cabinet, the Office of Indigenous Policy Co-ordination, Dept. of Foreign Affairs and Trade and a number of statutory authorities. Tjanara has travelled and worked extensively overseas, in Italy, Denmark, India, Europe and the USA and Canada, delivering Keynote speeches at International conferences, delivering workshops atInternational Indigenous “Healing Our Spirits Worldwide” Conference and IndigenousInternational Education Conferences, hosted every four years by an Indigenous community in a different country.

Tjanara is an inspiring co-creator of engagement between Indigenous and non- Indigenous peoples through using her own stories, art, writings, songs and dances passed to her from generations of knowledge and wisdom in her clans and the shared CIRCLEs she co-creates for holding healing and shared story/history. Tjanara wroteThe Red Earth as a novel and it was a finalist in the Qld. Premiers’ Literary David Unaipon Award in 2010. ‘A Long Way from No Go’, the autobiography is based on the Red Earth. Tjanara is a published poet in Penguin’s’ Inside Black Australia An Anthology of Aboriginal Poets Edited by Kevin Gilbert. Tjanara has submitted her PhD Tjukurpa Pulka – The Road to Eldership at ANU and expects to graduate in 2018.