Warimi - Hello, my name is Venessa Possum, and my kinship is Muringong Ngurra (Country) in the region of Camden NSW. I acknowledge seasonal paths connecting Georges and Nepean Rivers in this region of southwest Sydney. 

 

My paternal ancestor, Budbury, was a significant Indigenous intermediary of our homelands. As such, I acknowledge our connectedness with Dharawal and Gundungurra Neighbours and  Yuin Peoples further south.

 

I also acknowledge my Irish ancestry, which traces to the same region when my ancestor John Walsh from Kilkenny, Ireland, married my maternal ancestor Mandajuri (Mandagery/Mary) in 1837. 

 

In addition to my role as a Muringong custodian, I am an early-career academic, teacher and artist based in Gulamada, now known as the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia. My interdisciplinary cultural research includes a lifetime of innovative approaches to creativity and written expression, culminating in a Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Arts and Indigenous Studies from the Queensland College of Art and Design, Griffith University (2024).

 

My previous studies include a Bachelor of Contemporary Indigenous Art (CAIA) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours), for which I received the Chancellor's University Medals in 2017 and 2018.

Prior to my Indigenous studies, I completed a Certificate in Visual Art with Honours at the National Art School - East Sydney (1986-88). 

 

All aspects of my professional life demonstrate a continuity of Indigenous relationality and Indigenous intermediary practices. I design public art and sensorial gallery installations and my project work, consultancy work and teaching all continue to foreground  a legacy of lesser-known Indigenous kinship philosophies and stories.

 

I am a sessional academic in the Department for Critical Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University, teaching in the unit titled Dharug Ngurra (ABST1020) and a current recipient of a Macquarie University Fellowship in Indigenous Research (MUFIR).

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Living languages of Country, including footsteps and voices of ancestors and more than human kin, are my teachers. They are guiding my murugu (towards a path) of intermediating value-based knowledges - Venessa Possum 2026.