Warimi - Hello, my name is Venessa Possum, and my kinship is Muringong Ngurra (Country), acknowledging seasonal paths connecting Georges and Nepean Rivers in a 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 Mandagary (Mary) in 1837 in Windsor NSW. 

 

Aside from my position as a Muringong custodian, I am an early-career academic, teacher and artist based in Gulamada, now known as 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).

 

Previous studies include a Bachelor of Contemporary Indigenous Art (CAIA) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours), awarded 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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Lving languages of Country, including footsteps and voices of ancestors and more than human kin, are my teachers. They are guiding my muru (path) of intermediating value-based knowledges.

Venessa Possum 2026