Ted will provide us with an opportunity to listen to the knowledge formed from their years of leadership in the workforce and their intersectional perspectives and see how it can transform our ways of knowing, being and doing.

Ted is a proud Tagalaka and Taepithiggi person – a Queer, Neurodivergent, and First Nations person from the Gulf of Carpentaria, Far North Queensland. He has lost many loved ones to suicide, including his brother, and is a suicide survivor himself. He brings the heart of his lived experience and systems expertise into his work as a senior public servant, striving to make systems kinder and more just for marginalised communities. His career spans social policy, criminal justice, justice reform, mental health, and Aboriginal self-determination, alongside a strong pursuit of knowledge and understanding across law, sociology, gender, sexuality, and feminism.

Ted’s perspective on mental health is that First Peoples’ experiences are grounded in wellbeing yet shaped by a lived experience of systemic exclusion through cultural and racial marginalisation, identity politics, colonial definitions, and community dynamics. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people often experience poorer mental health outcomes, yet we are seen anecdotally adjacent to consumer and carer movements – movements that move on stolen land.

Having held multiple identified and designated roles working from lived experience, Ted has navigated challenges that impact social and emotional wellbeing and extend beyond the mental health sector. First Peoples are oppressed by multiple competing social theories – from the historical, political, cultural, and social determinants of mental health to the ways Aboriginal people assert, negotiate, and defend identity while navigating survival, recognition, and sovereignty.

From Treaty to the Voice, connection to culture, adverse childhood experiences, intergenerational trauma, racism, and homophobia - not all First Peoples lead from the same perspective, and not all of us hold cultural authority. Yet many of us employ our Lived Expertise every day, across contexts, and it all ties back to wellbeing. We are leaders doing leadership, often under different names, like ‘obligation’ and ‘responsibility’. If we ask, “What do Aboriginal folk need to be leaders?”, we must also ask, “What must be dismantled so Aboriginal folk can lead?”

Our Discipline, Our Knowledge, Our Strength is something we define and employ individually and collectively, but it’s not confined to the public mental health system.

Ted Johnston takes an intersectional approach, unpacking and reflecting on First Peoples + Lived Experience + Lived Expertise + Wellbeing.