This presentation explores what it means to move through, and attempt to belong within, clinical neuropsychology as an Aboriginal practitioner in a profession that still too often remains culturally unsafe, structurally exclusionary, and more invested in the performance of inclusion than the reality of change. Grounded in lived experience, it examines barriers to entry, the burden of training and belonging, and the personal and collective cost of systems that continue to misunderstand, underestimate, pathologise, and fail Aboriginal people, families, and communities. It also asks a harder question: what does it mean to keep inviting Aboriginal people into spaces that remain unsafe not only to work within, but to heal within?
With positionality at its core, the presentation speaks plainly about what sits beneath professional language and institutional self-congratulation: tokenism dressed up as consultation, intelligence questioned through colonial assumptions, and our people reduced to burden, deficit, or symptom clusters rather than the strength of our collective resilience. It interrogates the profession’s failure to distinguish colonial load, cultural load, and cultural responsibility, and the harm done when we are left to carry what should be shared structural work, or used as little more than Blak cladding within systems unwilling to change. It confronts the unsafe realities of assessment itself: tests lacking cultural relevance, failures to interpret performance within the right cultural and relational context, and insufficient upskilling to administer and understand culturally appropriate testing options.
At the heart of the presentation is the question of what is hidden, what is misread, and what it takes to survive. Through rich cultural metaphor and raw vulnerability, it reflects on the mask worn to move between worlds, the pressure of breaking new ground, the fear of being pigeonholed or punished for speaking plainly, and the need to see not only what is present, but what is absent. It explores what becomes possible when genuine safety, trust, and good teams allow the fullest parts of a person to emerge.
This presentation is intentionally and unapologetically raw, yet hopeful. It does not call for symbolic gestures, diversity theatre, or minor reform. It calls for honesty about the unsafe realities that still shape education, workplaces, assessment, and care, and for the transformation of psychology and neuropsychology into spaces that are not only more open to Blak practitioners, but genuinely safe, accessible, and worthy for Aboriginal people to enter as clinicians, trainees, and patients.

Learning Outcomes
1) Explain how positionality influences neuropsychological practice and interpretation.
2) Identify barriers to entry, belonging, and progression for Aboriginal trainees and practitioners.
3) Recognise tokenism and colonial assumptions operating within training and workplace systems.
4) Distinguish colonial load, cultural load, and cultural responsibility.
5) Describe why continuous reflexivity is essential to culturally safe practice.
6) Recognise the clinical risks of culturally unsafe assessment and interpretation.
7) Reflect on how strengths, connection, and resilience are often misread or overlooked within dominant systems.
8) Understand the importance and clinical applicability of silence
9) Identify concrete actions to make psychology and neuropsychology safer and more accessible for Aboriginal clinicians, trainees, and patients.