Drawing Strength from Country: Enduring Indigenous Wellbeing

Guest Editorial team: Dr Stephen Harfield (Narungga and Ngarrindjeri), Professor Michelle Kennedy (Wiradjuri), Sophie Pitt (Meriam), Associate Professor Paul Saunders (Biripi).

This collection, Drawing Strength from Country: Enduring Indigenous Wellbeing, foregrounds the relationality between holistic health, spiritual resilience and connection to Country. Resonating with the NAIDOC 2026 theme, 50 Years of Deadly, this enduring strength underscores a legacy of Indigenous excellence, resistance and sustained health advocacy. Central to this discourse is the imperative of Indigenous research. The issue highlights Torres Strait Islander cultural narrative, featuring Harry Pitt’s artwork—Saltwater, Identity and Healing. The artwork serves as a powerful articulation that comprehensive health paradigms are inextricably linked to cultural continuity, ecological stewardship and the transmission of intergenerational knowledge.

Cover artwork: Saltwater, Identity and Healing: A Torres Strait Islander Visual Narrative

Artist: Harry Pitt

I acknowledge the teachings of my lineage “Mapa” and contributions of my parents. This visual narrative presents a Torres Strait Islander perspective on health and wellbeing through a digitally created artwork grounded in Meriam and Erub cultural knowledge systems. The work explores the cultural aspects of health, including connection to Country, kinship, identity and intergenerational knowledge. Through layered symbolism and lived experience, the artwork demonstrates how social and emotional wellbeing are intrinsically linked to saltwater environments, seasonal rhythms and ancestral teachings.

The narrative highlights saltwater as a site of healing and cultural continuity, reflecting embodied experiences of transformation when returning to Country. Visual elements—including the Dhari, totemic species and marine motifs—function as a form of knowledge transmission, conveying relationships between people, environment and wellbeing.

The composition presents a central male figure adorned with a Dhari—the headdress symbolic of Torres Strait Islander identity and prominently featured on the Torres Strait Islander flag. His visage is layered with symbolic elements: fish overlay the eyes, starfish rest on the cheeks, and a pearl shell anchors the chin. These motifs extend beyond aesthetic choice, evoking sustenance, navigation and historical livelihood. The figure’s neck echoes the form of the frigate bird (can signal seasonal changes or location of fish), while turtles and dugongs flank either side—totemic presences that speak to kinship, ecological stewardship and inherited responsibility. The turtle reflects the artist’s paternal totem, while the dugong signifies a central spiritual connection within Meriam culture.

The background incorporates embossed trochus shells and strategically placed conch shells, which highlight the compass points referencing tribal winds, historical economies and ceremonial practice. The colour palette draws from the Torres Strait Islander flag, with black bands interwoven alongside hibiscus flowers—an intimate tribute to the artist’s late mother and her enduring connection to land, gardening and storytelling.

Emerging from family dialogue and lived experience, the artwork foregrounds the cultural and healing properties of saltwater. Within Torres Strait Islander methodology, saltwater is not merely environmental but relational—integral to identity, wellbeing and continuity. The artist recalls returning to Erub, his mother’s Island, and experiencing an immediate spiritual and emotional recalibration. This transformation was later recognised by an Elder, affirming the profound connection between place, body and spirit. Such experiences underscore the concept that health is not discrete but embedded within Country, tides and ancestral rhythms.

The artwork invites reflection on a holistic conception of health, where individual and collective wellbeing are inseparable from cultural integrity. As such, it offers a visual articulation of how life flows with the same seamless rhythm as the sea breeze moving through coconut leaves.