Maddy Connors (Saunders)

I am a proud Yorta Yorta, Dja Dja Wurrung and Gamilaroi woman with strong family and community ties. For more than 15 years, I have worked across community health, non-profit and government spaces, staying closely connected to community and the realities our people navigate. Through this work I have seen how systems impact our people and how important it is that community voices guide decisions that affect our lives. I carry this responsibility as a mother, community member and Aboriginal woman committed to walking with integrity.

I wish to serve as a Member of the First Peoples’ Assembly to ensure our mob are genuinely heard as Treaty progresses. In my eyes, the ‘doing’ phase of Treaty is where everything becomes tangible, measurable and felt in everyday life – not just spoken about in reports or symbolic commitments. If truth-telling was about listening and acknowledging, the doing phase must be about restructuring systems and transferring real decision-making power.

My aspiration for Treaty is that it delivers lasting change – strengthening our communities, protecting cultural authority and embedding self-determination into practice so our children grow up proud in culture, strong in identity and supported by systems shaped with and for our people.