Goslett, M., & Selkirk, B. (2025). wangii wadhan biyay–Baskets of Listening and Respect. In S. Bhatia, J. S. Fernández, & C. C. Sonn (Eds). Decolonial Psychology: Academic and Activist Perspectives. Taylor & Francis Group.
ABSTRACT

This chapter offers a meeting place (ganma) between Indigenous Australian knowledges and Western psychological practice; a framework for respectful, inclusive praxis that honours deep-time realisations and decolonises psychology by critically examining Eurocentric dominance and oppression. wangii wadhan biyay (baskets of listening and respect, Dhurga language) offers seven baskets of knowledge layers that must be in place for culturally safe, effective psychological healing to be offered to Indigenous Australians. Our experience is that if all the layers of wangii wadhan biyay are incorporated, Western psychological modalities can be effectively offered to Indigenous Australians if grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, and if the Indigenous Australians with whom we work are interested in such ways of understanding their subjective experiences and possibilities of healing. Further, all peoples can benefit from therapies and philosophies that incorporate Indigenous Australian understandings of the self as a relational construct with the inherent sacredness of all beings and forms, and the sharing of power and resources.