As corporate Australia focuses more intensively on engagement with First Nations peoples through Reconciliation Action Plans and cultural awareness, creating culturally safe environments for First Nations peoples remains vitally important.
While you might be tempted to rush into reconciliation and creating culturally safe workplaces Joseph Wallace, an Indigenous man from Jirrabal Rainforest Aboriginal descendants in Far North Queensland and Juru Aboriginal descendants in Bowen told a crowd at a recent Property Council event it was better to not rush into things.
“It’s not a sprint,” Wallace, director of Multhana Property, said. “We all have responsibility to continue running with the baton to share with our peers and our co-workers and our communities.”
Multhana is Kalkadoon meaning “people coming together to help each other,” and Wallace stated that this was his preferred strategy to the business – providing possibilities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to create and develop professionally, financially, and socially.
He said companies on their path to reconciliation through engaging Indigenous businesses can see the effect they have on Indigenous people in the community.
Corin Morcom, Senior Associate at Allens, also emphasised that it is okay to take your time on these issues.
She said it took roughly eight months for them to sign off on an Acknowledgement of Country plaque in the Brisbane office because they wanted to consult with local elders, a relationship the company didn’t have at the time.
“And it took us a really long time to go step by step through various different relationships to find a local elder who we could talk to about this and now we have that relationship,” she said.
Morcom also noted that while change is incremental, it doesn’t just come from the system and businesses alone.
“Individuals make up that culture and that system,” she said. “There are targeted interventions you can make and there are also system wide interventions that you can make.
“It’s doing your own homework, doing your own cultural awareness training, whether that’s individual or [through] your company.”
She said an important part on the journey of reconciliation is realising where your business fits in the puzzle.
Morcom said during the company’s Reconciliation Action Plan process they learnt there were areas they could have a strong and meaningful impact on reconciliation, and some areas where they were not best placed.
“We are at the moment looking at kind of our First Nations engagement strategy, and really trying to focus in on the areas where we can have the most meaningful contribution,” she said.
While Allens supports many First Nations students, she said not all of them necessarily want to join the company full-time, and that shifted how the group saw themselves adding value.
“We’ve realised, and it’s been a process to realize that that’s not the pathway that most students want, our value to them is not as a future employer, it’s as a network builder,” she said.