Text Box 5.3: Healing Foundation submission to Wiyi Yani U Thangani Co-design The traditional government approach to community engagement involves ‘consultation’. This approach is rigid, has proven to fail over decades of continued disadvantage and over‑representation … In contrast with ‘consultation’, co‑design involves service providers and communities working together from the outset to develop new approaches that are genuinely informed by clients. By working directly with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men, women and children on every aspect of program design and evaluation, communities will ensure that programs are designed to be safe, accessible and culturally and locally relevant. However, in Wiyi Yani U Thangani, I also noted that women were worried that the term ‘co‑design’ was already being widely misapplied and was in danger of becoming yet another meaningless buzz word. The way that governments engage without listening or responding to the voices of First Nations peoples has created a deep sense of mistrust amongst Indigenous communities.33 (b) The right to non‑discrimination One of the key purposes of the Declaration is to highlight that equality recognises difference and does not mean assimilation. Article 2 of the Declaration articulates the right to equality and freedom from discrimination and is another key human right in the major human rights treaties to which Australia is a signatory. Importantly, the enjoyment of the right to culture and rights associated with land will look different for different people. This means that seemingly ‘equal’ requirements in law or policy can impact different groups of people in different ways. The need to accommodate this in law and policy is sometimes expressed as the difference between formal and substantive equality, or the difference between equality and equity. (c) Social and economic rights Economic and social rights are often spoken about separately, as relating to the ‘practical’ aspects of the lives of our peoples, which should be focused on first and foremost. They are easy to see as key rights that many First Nations people do not enjoy to the same degree as other Australians. The Closing the Gap targets highlight these kinds of rights, such as health and education. It is harder to get policy makers, politicians and the mainstream public to understand that these essential and basic human rights will not – indeed cannot – be enjoyed in a way equal to other Australians when the rights to culture, self‑determination, and non‑discrimination are not fully enjoyed. A significant portion of Wiyi Yani U Thangani addressed these kinds of practical rights – specifically, I focused on our right to enjoy them equally. In the context of native title and land justice issues more generally, it is critical that the practical rights involved be conceived of as issues of self‑determination and equality. It is also critical that the other rights which First Nations people in Australia struggle to enjoy equally are understood to be reliant on the practical manifestation of self‑determination and equality in the significant area of land justice. 24 Women in Native Title: Native Title Report 2024