PRACTICE IN COMMUNITY  PROJECT 

Arnya Songline Methodology: Weaving Kinship Legacies  
Kinship-led cultural project strengthening Wik and Wikway knowledge, healing and intergenerational connection across Cape York communities. 
Primary Project Location: Weipa, QLD

Building on its successful 2023–25 pilot phase, Weaving Kinship Legacies is a cultural arts initiative that delivers outcomes aligned with cultural wellbeing priorities of the kinship-linked Napranum, Weipa and Aurukun communities. The project applies Arnya Songline Methodology, a culturally grounded creative practice that supports healing, strengthens social and cultural connection, and sustains living cultural expression. Guided by Wik and Wikway Lore and delivered through strong community partnerships and external Indigenous arts expertise, the project facilitates intergenerational knowledge transfer, strengthens kinship systems, and reinforces cultural identity. Outcomes will enhance community capacity to sustain cultural practices, supporting long-term wellbeing for future generations.

This awarded Practice in Community Funding will assist and sustain the development of the Arnya Songline methodology approach in addressing the needs of its participants affected by ongoing trauma resulting from dysfunctional social impacts. This culture-based process is authored by the people, with the people and for the people. 
- Fiona Wirrer-George Oochunyung

 ABOUT FIONA 

Fiona Wirrer-George Oochunyung is a Western Cape York-based artist and creative, philosophical and spiritual methodologist currently living on Alngith Country. 

Fiona’s background is in Performance Theatre, Choreography, Literature and Academic research.  She draws from Western Cape epistemology, ontology and axiology to determine her creative vocabulary and modes of expression. Fiona is currently Senior Researcher/Project Officer for the Dandighu Yimbana Arts Informed Indigenous Research Project (2025-2029). 

Her PhD titled “The Call of Lineage”: A Living Epistemology” (2021) was an auto-ethnographic methodological approach focusing on the repatriation of ancestral (female) human remains from the Donald Thompson Collection at Museum of Victoria. The Arnya Songline methodology framework was refined throughout the PhD and is now her methodology of Practice.  

Photo Credit: Sheridan N. Teitzel

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Dr Fiona Wirrer-George | Arts-based research

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