The National Suicide Prevention and Trauma Recovery Project has been working with vulnerable people, including incarcerated children, over the past 3.5 years with few resources and little outside support.
Coordinator Megan Krakouer, alongside Gerry Georgatos, played a pivotal role in the class action by current and former Banksia Hill detainees now underway, collecting testimony from hundreds of young people.
Ms Krakouer said First Nations communities struggle "to keep alive far too many of our… people - children and older - living below the Bread Line, in crushing poverty".
"One in 16 First Nations deaths is a suicide. One in 50 Australian deaths is a suicide. The horrific disparity cannot continue as if entrenched," she said.
The Project recently partnered with Kuditj, having previously operated as a 100% volunteer organisation.
"(We have) been fighting back to make a difference," Ms Krakouer said.
"We are a 24/7 effort but we are small and need to be big. We have been making the difference that all our people long for. We need… support to both survive and grow."
"The sins of a nation cannot continue to take the lives of our most vulnerable.
"The Black Struggle to keep our children and parents alive continues. Sixty percent of our First Nations people live below the poverty line. Nearly all First Nations suicides are of children, youth, parents who lived below the poverty line."
The National Suicide Prevention and Trauma Recovery Project noted that keeping First Nations children with their families and keeping First Nations people out of prison, in the face of high rates of child removal and incarceration, is vital to preventing generational poverty, trauma and suicide.
"Families need to be supported and not destroyed," Ms Krakouer said. "Australia's First Nations children are subjected to the world's highest child removal rates."
"There is no greater legacy than to save a life and to shine light on hope."
The Project is now running a fundraising drive to "give us the capability to help many more of our people than ever before", and to date has raised almost $30,000.
