About
Leah Manaema Avene (she/them) is a mother, musician, broadcaster, facilitator and educator of Irish and Tuvaluan ancestry whose work focuses on personal, relational, collective and systemic repair, healing and transformation.
Storytelling and narrative healing inform Leah’s writing, public speaking and therapy work, as a powerful way of reclaiming identity, healing trauma and resisting oppression. Mentored by Rachel Naninaaq Edwardson and David Selvarajah Vadiveloo of Community Prophets and informed by Native Wisdoms, Gestalt Psychotherapy, Trauma Informed Practice, Permaculture principles, Radical Unschooling Philosophy and Critical Indigenous Pedagogy, Leah’s approach is multidimensional and responsive to need and context.
Leah’s work aims to scrutinize and dismantle colonial systems whilst celebrating the inter-generational resilience, resistance and strength of marginalised communities.
“For me, the process of Decolonising is to examine ourselves, our make up, our way of being and take each value and percieved truth and hold it up to the light to scrutinise. Does this serve me? Does this feel true? Does this belong with me anymore? This is an interdependent process of collaboration with selves and others.
Colonisation normalises dehumanisation, oppression and injustice. To heal is to reclaim one’s own humanity and transform internal and external systems of oppression.
This process is complex. Many truths co exist. There are many ways of knowing and many ways of healing. This cannot and must not be done alone.”
Leah established Co Culture + Communication in late 2016 in response to a growing frustration that organisations’ ‘Equity and Inclusion Policies’ were performative and not living breathing commitments to transformation. Through studying a Masters in Gestalt Therapy, teaching and implementing Culturally Safe and Responsive Practice, parenting, unschooling, educating, working in community and collaborating with young people, Co Cultural Practice has emerged through lived experience, research and the generous mentorship of many elders, most significantly Rachel N Edwardson and David S Vadiveloo.
Co Cultural Practice is emergent, deeply devoted to justice and care of people and in a constant state of humble learning, development and collaboration.