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What if you spent your whole childhood feeling something you couldn’t name, only to discover the answer on your mother’s deathbed?
In this episode, I sit down with Nikki Domeney, a Project Coordinator at Social Engine and board member of Black Duck Group, whose own story of discovering her Indigenous heritage just eighteen months before her mother passed away has shaped everything about how she now supports others through grief, identity and connection to Country. Nikki describes growing up feeling “like she had two heads” — carrying an intuitive, spiritual knowing she had nowhere to place, until she learned her mother and grandmother were part of the Stolen Generation, disconnected from their Gamilaroi heritage in New South Wales.
We talk about what it meant for Nikki to walk onto Country for the first time in Dirranbandi, meeting cousins she’d never known, and giving them back stories of the aunty and mother they’d lost touch with. Nikki explains Wayapa Wuurrk, an Earth-centred wellbeing practice built around fourteen elements that helps people — Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike — reconnect with the land, with grief, and with themselves, and why it’s now being used in Victorian early childhood education and corporate settings alike.
We also go deep into intergenerational trauma and the emerging science of epigenetics, what it’s like to hold both an Indigenous and Celtic heritage at once, the guilt and nuance of “walking two worlds,” and Nikki’s work helping business leaders understand the difference between lore and law. It’s a generous, moving conversation about grief, belonging, and what it takes to reclaim what was taken.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
- How Nikki discovered her Indigenous heritage just eighteen months before her mother died, and what it was like meeting her mob for the first time at her mother’s deathbed
- The Stolen Generation story behind Nikki’s family, and how her mother and grandmother were separated from their Gamilaroi culture and Country
- What it felt like to set foot on Country in Dirranbandi for the first time, and the “coming home” moment with a cousin who looked just like her mum
- What self-sovereignty means, and why Nikki sees reclaiming identity as an act of returning to yourself
- What Wayapa Wuurrk is: the fourteen elements, its Indigenous origins, and how it’s being used in Victorian early education and corporate workplaces
- How Nikki uses Wayapa to hold space for grief, including a story about supporting a school leader and her team through the death of a student
- Intergenerational trauma, epigenetics and “cellular memory” — and why Nikki says most of us are carrying trauma we’re not even conscious of
- The nuance of “walking two worlds” as someone with lighter skin and no lived experience of overt racism, and how Nikki holds that alongside her own identity journey
- Lore versus law: what Nikki has learned about trust, compliance and old ways of being through her work as a people and culture leader
- What Nikki hopes to pass on to her own children, and why she believes everyone is a storyteller on a healing journey
Connect with Nikki Domeney
Black Duck Group: https://www.blackduckgroup.org.au/
Social Engine: https://www.socialengine.org.au/
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Wayapa Wuurrk: https://wayapa.com/
Remember; You may not be ready to die, but at least you can be prepared.
Take care,
Catherine
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