In November 2008, we became incorporated as the Anwernekenhe National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander HIV/AIDS Alliance (ANA). We became incorporated 14 years to the day after the end of the first Anwernekenhe conference. That first conference had set many goals, and many had been achieved over the years. Incorporating with the name of our first gathering is the realisation of a dream. Anwernekenhe means ‘us mob’ in the Arrente language, the language of the people upon whose land the first conference was held in 1994. Permission to use the name was given by the Arrente Elders. Anwernekenhe 1 was the first national HIV/AIDS meeting for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gay men and sistergirls. It was funded by the Commonwealth government, with a total of 73 delegates coming together from every state and territory. The conference saw the establishment of a National Working Party of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gay men, sistergirls and people with HIV. The job of the Working Party was to help forge a response to the HIV epidemic threatening our communities. The conference set the foundations for an ongoing program which, at its core, was to be community driven. It also set out a framework for future work with the conference passing 45 recommendations. By 1996 the Working Party in partnership with the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO) had successfully obtained Commonwealth funding to establish an ongoing project at AFAO. There was agreement that strategic direction for the project was to be provided by the National Working Party. This would mean that the project would be community driven—directed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gay men, sistergirls and people living with HIV. It would be responsive to the needs of these groups. AFAO supported the idea that the HIV response for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gay men, sistergirls and people living with HIV should be shaped by the members and representatives of these communities. AFAO agreed to provide day-to-day management for the project. The first Aboriginal project officer was appointed in 1996. The project’s brief was to conduct national consultations with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gay men and sistergirls and, using what was learned from these consultations, to develop a strategy which would guide the national response. Together with AFAO, we operated the national project from 1996 until 2010 in conjunction with four-yearly Anwernekenhe national conferences. This work has been supported by the Australian Government, primarily through the Department of Health & Ageing’s Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health (OATSIH). This ongoing support has been absolutely critical in enabling us to build an effective community response to HIV. In 2006 at Anwernekenhe 4, we made two important decisions. The first was to expand our work beyond gay men and sistergirls to respond to the needs of other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who find themselves at risk of HIV: women and young people, people who inject drugs, engage in sex work or sex for favours, are in custodial settings or are mobile/transient. The second major decision was to establish an independent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander controlled organisation solely focussed on building and maintaining a comprehensive and effective response to HIV among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. By working in partnership with a mainstream HIV organisation, AFAO, but taking care to retain our independence, we have been able to strategise and to operate programs within our own communities and service providing agencies, and, at the same time, have a significant and ongoing influence on the mainstream Australian HIV strategic frameworkand response. This has resulted in programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that remain culturally specific and therefore more effective. But equally importantly, we have not allowed ourselves to be marginalised or alienated from the mainstream response to HIV—and this has benefited both the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander response and the mainstream Australian response. Some of our friends in the mainstream response look at our systematic, coherent process for addressing HIV and see a considerably more structured, predictable and effective response than the framework in which they have to operate. We look forward to refining and continuing this proven model—and thereby maintaining lower rates of HIV infections among our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.