Joshua Maurer is an Aboriginal Family Program facilitator for The Illawarra Koori Men’s Support Group, and a proud Wakka Wakka Man from Cherbourg Country, Queensland, but now living on Dharawal Country. Joshua is a Secondary and Primary School teacher. He is a passionate advocate for Aboriginal perpetrators of family and domestic violence and has 12 years’ experience in the Community Services Sector. As a victim survivor himself with 14 years lived experience in a same sex relationship, I believe that reconnecting to culture and unpacking past trauma and regaining one’s cultural identity is the first step towards healing and holistic wellness for Aboriginal Men and their families.

Joshua has implemented for the last 24 months a culturally safe program called Brothers Against Domestic Violence (BADV) ChangeV (Men’s Behaviour Change Program). As the longest known surviving culture in the world, our experience of European settlement needs to inform our understanding of family domestic violence. Fierce Aboriginal resistance to European settlement, followed by 150 years of cultural oppression, racial tension, bitterness also impacts on the existence of family violence today. It is in this context that Illawarra Koori Men’s Support Group (IKMSG) started BADV in the Illawarra. Our unique program uses a combination of a yarning (open discussion group) and a psychoeducational group format to provide significant changes for the group members. This combined approach is not a new way of doing MBC group programs but is a way of delivering Aboriginal men’s behavioral change (MBC) group work using existing approaches.