Indigenous fathers play a central role in the lives of Indigenous children growing up strong.
For Australia’s Indigenous people, growing strong includes the possessing heightened levels of
health, education and cultural knowledge. This article focuses on Indigenous fathers and how
they understand the importance of sharing cultural activities with their children. We argue that
the sharing of Indigenous cultural practices, and the subsequent telling of this narrative, are
key enablers for Indigenous fathers to assist their families to flourish. We analyse qualitative
data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children to explore what components/aspects
of Indigenous culture fathers perceive will assist children to strongly mature, how culture is
transmitted, and what barriers fathers face in this process. Results show that according to
participants, learning about culture, family and identity are components to helping children
prosper, with collecting food the most common activity used to achieve this end.