Australian First Peoples’ cultural medicines comprise a distinct medical paradigm

Highlights• First Peoples' cultural medicines comprise a distinct medical paradigm.• Cultural medicines are grounded in collective, relational and holistic wellbeing.• Six interconnected domains together shape First Peoples' healing practices.• Country, ceremony, foods and healers are central to culturally grounded care.• Health systems must recognise cultural medicines through First Peoples' governance.As a Truwulway and Litamirimina woman from Lutruwita (Tasmania), I first start with a yarn… Zee was five, and this was her sixth bout of pustular tonsillitis in a single year.This time it would not shift.Two rounds of antibiotics had not touched it, and I was watching her swallow through pain that felt bigger than her little body.On the third visit, the doctor said it plainly: 'it's time to think about taking her tonsils out.'I remember sitting there thinking -how can the best option be to cut something out, when we still don't understand what else might help?I went home, opened my laptop, and did what so many parents do when they are concerned: I searched for something else I could do to help her get better and avoid surgery.I found information from medicines all over the world and settled on a Native American medicine.Zee's throat settled.The infection cleared.And it never came back.That moment stayed with me -not as proof that any one remedy is a miracle, but as a wake-up call about access.In Australia, it is normal to reach for imported traditional medicines alongside biomedicine, for example: Chinese medicine practitioners have been nationally registered and regulated since 2012 (Hibberd and Lim 2025).