the value of cultural training workshops

By kush bourke - nsw based media stringer

I would like to pay my respects to the Djiringanj people of the Yuin nation where I live and work on lands never ceded. I acknowledge their connection to land, waters and sky and I would like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging.

What is Cultural Considerations Training? And what is its value to Australian communities?

When I enrolled to undertake the Yalbangarra Cultural Considerations Training that was organised by Far South Film, a screen organisation based on the Far South Coast of NSW, I wasn’t entirely sure what it was or how it related to me as a writer and producer. But by the end of the day I felt I had gained so much.

The workshop was held in Tathra on Djiringanj land, in the Yuin Nation. After a beautiful Welcome to Country by Kamilaroi and Yuin woman Michelle Scott, Alison Simpson, a Wiradjuri and Wemba Wemba woman and founder of Yalbangarra Cultural Consultancy opened the workshop with a question for each of us, “What do you want to get from this workshop?” It made me think...What do I want for myself, for my community and for Australia?

Many of the participants had the same answer as I did. We want to understand what it means to live on Indigenous lands, we want to learn how to make our communities more inclusive.

Alison has been running cultural training sessions for 15 years. She started running in-house training for nurses at the Bega Hospital where she was working in 2007 to help them deliver better healthcare for Aboriginal patients. The more she helped her colleagues the more she saw the need for better understanding and training within the community. Many businesses and community groups were not delivering appropriate or effective services to Indigenous people, this was making them less likely to access important services and led them to disengage from society. In 2013 Alison founded Yalbangarra and started delivering training to health and community service groups around the far south of NSW.

“When I first started to deliver the content, some of the ignorant comments and questions, from quite intelligent people, were horrendous and quite often offensive... I have also had the complete opposite reaction which happens way more often then the negative ones... (there has been) a huge shift from ignorance to intrigue over the past few years. There are more allies and more non Aboriginal people wanting to learn more.”

So how can these workshops benefit creatives? As a creative living in the regions in Australia I get a lot of my inspiration from the land and the people of this beautiful country that I am lucky to call home. Naturally I have found myself drawn to Indigenous culture because it is woven into our culture as Australians. But is it ok to use someone else's culture in our own art?

In recent times there has been a push for authentic and lived experience in creative works. This important step in the arts to make ‘Nothing about us without us’, has led to less stereotyping, misrepresentation and ‘trauma porn’ on our screens and in our books. It has also worked to level the playing field for diverse creatives so they can finally get an equal chance to tell their stories.

Alison’s training underpinned the reasons why Indigenous people need the ability to control their own narrative. Having been underrepresented and misrepresented for over 200 years they need agency over their own culture. But as non Indigenous creatives we can make space for Indigenous stories, art, dance and music to be shared by stepping aside and when appropriate working alongside Aboriginal creatives. And when we do all of our work will be better for it.

“I would love for participants to have a heightened understanding of the true history of this country and how it has and does impact on Aboriginal people in current society” Alison acknowledged that Australia's colonial history can make people uncomfortable. “Our history is not about making people feel guilty for what their ancestors did, it’s not about pointing the finger or blame. It has happened and we can’t change it, (but) in saying that, we are supposed to learn from it. In order to move forward, we have to acknowledge it, we have to recognise the damage it has caused and still causes and we have to stop telling Aboriginal people to ‘get over it’. We need to work on solutions for healing the trauma that history has inflicted.”

To build better communities we need every single person to feel like a valued member of society so together we can make where we live and work a better place for everyone. Workshops such as this are one important step to building a better Australia for us all to enjoy.