Aboriginal healing is not simply bush medicine. It is not just knowledge of which plants treat which conditions. It is a comprehensive approach to health and wellbeing that integrates the physical, the social, the emotional and the spiritual — a system in which the health of an individual cannot be separated from their connection to Country, to community, to culture and to ancestors.

Understanding this — really understanding it, not just acknowledging it as a formality before getting to the plant compounds — is the starting point for engaging with Aboriginal healing respectfully and accurately. This guide attempts to provide that broader context: what Aboriginal healing encompasses, the specific practices it involves, how it relates to contemporary medicine, and what its future might look like in an Australia that is slowly beginning to take it more seriously.

Healing as a holistic concept

The concept of health in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander worldviews is fundamentally different from the biomedical model that underpins Western medicine. Where Western medicine primarily addresses the physical body — its organs, cells, biochemistry — Aboriginal understandings of health encompass physical, social, emotional, cultural and spiritual dimensions simultaneously.

This is not simply a cultural preference. It reflects a fundamentally different understanding of what a human being is and what sustains health. In many Aboriginal traditions, illness is not purely a physiological event — it can reflect disruption to one's relationship with Country, to social obligations and relationships within community, or to spiritual and ceremonial dimensions of life. Treatment, correspondingly, addresses all of these dimensions, not just the physical symptoms.

The National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) has articulated an Aboriginal concept of health that encompasses physical, social, emotional and cultural wellbeing of the whole community, in which the individual is only one part. This holistic framework has been adopted in Australian health policy — at least formally — as recognition that the Western biomedical model alone has consistently failed to improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health outcomes.

The role of healers and knowledge keepers

In traditional Aboriginal society, healing knowledge was not democratically distributed. Specific knowledge — about which plants to use for which conditions, the correct preparation methods, the ceremonial dimensions of treatment, and the spiritual causes and remedies for illness — was held by designated knowledge keepers, typically elders who had earned the right to that knowledge through years of learning, practice and ceremony.

These knowledge keepers occupied a specific social role, with responsibilities not only for treating illness but for maintaining the knowledge systems that made treatment possible — through teaching, ceremony and the management of Country. Their role was simultaneously medical, social and spiritual in a way that has no direct equivalent in Western professional medicine.

The term most commonly applied to these healers in non-Aboriginal literature is 'ngangkari' (from the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara languages of central Australia), though equivalent terms exist in many language groups. Ngangkari healers work with spiritual dimensions of health — addressing causes of illness that are invisible to the physical eye — alongside and complementary to plant-based treatments.

The Ngangkari Work — Anangu Way, published by the NPY Women's Council, provides an account by ngangkari healers themselves of their practice, in their own words. It is one of the best publicly available resources for understanding traditional healing from the perspective of its practitioners.

Plant-based healing practices

The plant-based dimension of Aboriginal healing — the one most commonly discussed in Western contexts — is extensive and sophisticated. Hundreds of native plant species have documented traditional medicinal uses across different communities and regions. The specific plants, preparation methods and applications varied enormously across the continent's diverse ecological zones and language groups.

Documented preparation methods include infusions and decoctions of leaves, bark and roots; fresh or heated leaf poultices applied to wounds, sores and painful joints; steam inhalation of crushed aromatic leaves for respiratory complaints; direct consumption of medicinally active fruit, seeds and leaves; and therapeutic smoking using aromatic plant material, which addressed both physical and spiritual dimensions of illness.

The key plants with the best-documented traditional and scientific support include tea tree, eucalyptus, lemon myrtle, Kakadu plum, emu bush, quandong, river mint, saltbush and paperbark. Our full guide to the most important native medicinal plants covers each of these in detail, and our A-Z reference guide provides a broader overview of the full medicinal flora.

Ceremonial and spiritual healing

Much of what traditional healers did — and what ngangkari practitioners continue to do today — involves dimensions of healing that are not accessible to Western scientific inquiry through conventional methods. Ceremonial practices, singing, smoking of both body and Country, the use of sacred objects, and the application of knowledge about spiritual causes of illness are all part of the healing system in many communities.

These practices are not separable from the plant-based and physical aspects of healing — they are integrated with them in ways that reflect the holistic understanding of health described above. A person might receive both plant medicine treatment and ceremonial healing for the same illness, because the illness is understood to have both physical and spiritual dimensions that require addressing simultaneously.

Much of this knowledge is sacred and restricted — shared only within appropriate cultural contexts, not public, and certainly not available for external analysis or appropriation. Acknowledging its existence and respecting its privacy is more appropriate than attempting to document or explain it from outside.

Smoking ceremonies

The smoking ceremony is one of the most widely distributed healing and ceremonial practices across Aboriginal Australia, though the specific plants used, the protocols, and the contexts in which smoking is performed vary considerably between communities and regions. In its healing dimensions, smoking involves directing therapeutic smoke — generated by burning aromatic plant material, typically green branches — over the body of a person being treated.

The practice has both physical and spiritual dimensions. Physically, the aromatic compounds in the smoke — including those from emu bush, various eucalyptus species and other native aromatics — have documented antimicrobial properties that provide biological plausibility for their traditional wound-care and skin-care applications. Spiritually, smoking cleanses, protects and heals in ways that extend beyond the physical chemistry of plant compounds.

Smoking ceremonies are also used for cleansing Country and community — for removing negative energies from spaces, marking significant transitions, and welcoming people to Country. The healing and ceremonial functions of smoking overlap and interweave in ways that are not separable into neat categories.

Contemporary Aboriginal healing and health services

Aboriginal community-controlled health services (ACCHSs) represent the most significant structural expression of Aboriginal healing in contemporary Australia. There are more than 140 ACCHSs operating across the country — clinics, medical centres and health services run by and for Aboriginal communities, incorporating both Western biomedical care and culturally appropriate, community-controlled approaches to health and wellbeing.

Many of these services work to integrate traditional healing knowledge and practice with contemporary medicine — employing ngangkari healers alongside medical doctors in some settings, developing culturally appropriate health promotion, and centering Aboriginal concepts of holistic wellbeing rather than the deficit-focused model that has often characterised non-Aboriginal health service delivery to Aboriginal communities.

NACCHO — the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation — is the peak body representing these services. Their work and publications provide the most authoritative contemporary framing of Aboriginal health from an Aboriginal-led perspective.

Traditional healing and Western medicine

The relationship between Aboriginal traditional healing and Western medicine in contemporary Australia is complex and evolving. Decades of medical paternalism — in which Western medicine dismissed traditional practice as superstition and actively undermined its transmission — have given way, slowly and unevenly, to greater recognition.

There is growing evidence that integrating traditional healing approaches with Western medical care produces better outcomes for Aboriginal patients — not because traditional healing replaces Western medicine for conditions where Western medicine is effective, but because a healthcare experience that respects and incorporates a patient's cultural framework is more likely to result in engagement, trust and treatment adherence.

The differences between the two systems are real and should not be papered over. Western biomedicine is highly effective for acute conditions, infectious diseases, trauma and many chronic diseases when patients engage with it. Traditional healing addresses dimensions of health that Western biomedicine does not reach. Both are valuable; neither is a substitute for the other in all contexts. The integrative models being developed by community-controlled health services represent the most promising current approach to navigating this complexity.

Related reading

For more on specific dimensions of Aboriginal healing covered in this guide:

Engaging respectfully

For non-Aboriginal Australians and international visitors interested in Aboriginal healing, a few principles matter. Begin by listening — to Aboriginal voices, practitioners and community-controlled organisations rather than to interpretations filtered through non-Aboriginal perspectives. Distinguish between publicly shared knowledge and restricted knowledge: much of what traditional healers know is not public, and should not be. Support Aboriginal-led health services, enterprises and research. Approach traditional healing with the same respect you would give to any sophisticated knowledge system that has been developed and refined over tens of thousands of years — which is to say, with genuine humility about how much you don't know.

Australia is only beginning to recognise the depth of what Aboriginal healing represents. The knowledge exists. The practitioners exist. The task is building the structures — policy, funding, respect — that allow that knowledge to continue being practised, transmitted and, where communities choose, shared.

Keep reading