ABSTRACT
Introduction: Creative arts therapists and other wellbeing practitioners increasingly integrate arts-in-nature practices into their work with children and young people in Australian contexts. Our chapter focuses on understandings and practices that can make this work more mindful and culturally sensitive. Approach: Melissa McDevitt Weston is a proud Boon Wurrung woman and contemporary Aboriginal artist who provides cultural advice to creative arts therapist Carla van Laar, a non-Aboriginal woman who lives and works in Boon Wurrung Country. We explore ways to cultivate cultural awareness using an arts-based, practice-led approach informed by principles of self-determination. Outcomes: Layers of understanding and meaning can help to inform the ways in which practitioners engage with the country they work in. These layers include understanding the connection of Aboriginal people to their country, the importance of acknowledging one’s country, ways to acknowledge the country with children and young people, the significance of cultural heritage, working in culturally respectful ways in the environment, and culturally safe ways to work with natural materials. Implications: Cultivating cultural awareness adds a layer of depth to arts-in-nature practice with children and young people and can become a profoundly healing experience for the country, traditional owners, practitioners, and the people they work alongside.
