I've developed a set of principles over more than 20 years working in Aboriginal employment. These principles form an important part of my Aboriginal employment philosophy.

I use these principles when working with clients to help guide their best intentions towards things that, in my experience, work. Each of my products has been designed with these principles in mind.

These principles will help you work out if what you're doing or planning to do with Aboriginal employment is going to get you where you want to be with Aboriginal employment.

This article introduces you to one of these principles:

It's not just culture

People often say to me, tell me more about your culture. If you teach me all about your culture, then I'll understand and I'll be able to do better with Aboriginal employment.

But it's not just culture that you need to think about. I'd also argue that you don't need to know everything about culture to do better with Aboriginal employment.

You do need a healthy respect for, and some basic knowledge of, our cultures to be successful. No doubt. Culture is important, but it's not the only thing that impacts Aboriginal employment.

What you need to understand is the broad context and experience of Aboriginal people today, in order to address the barriers of Aboriginal employment. This is why I developed the Blakworks Model of Aboriginal Experience. I developed this model back in 2015.

Because it's not just culture, but Aboriginal experience that you need to understand.

You can look at this model as either broad Aboriginal experience, or daily Aboriginal experience.

There are three elements of Aboriginal experience that you need to understand to address Aboriginal employment.

One. Culture

One of which is culture. Every Aboriginal person experiences their culture every day. Everyone experiences their culture in their own way. Some Aboriginal people experience a strong knowledge and connection with their culture. And, some Aboriginal people experience a loss of that knowledge and connection with culture. And, most Aboriginal people experience both connection and loss, somewhere along a continuum.

I'm an Aboriginal person, for example, who has a strong knowledge and connection with culture, but also experience a loss of my language. I'm of a generation, as is my father, who grew up without my language.

Every Aboriginal person experiences their culture in someway every day. We all sit somewhere along the continuum from strong knowledge and connection, to loss of knowledge and connection.

Of course, you should be learning about our cultures, improving your knowledge to do better with Aboriginal employment. But, we also need to know how it presents in our everyday for different Aboriginal people.

Two. Disadvantage

Another element of Aboriginal experience is disadvantage.

Aboriginal people experience disadvantage every day. The first things people generally think of when they think about disadvantage are education levels, and income levels. But, they're not the only indicators of disadvantage.

The Productivity Commission's Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage Report uses a range of measures to indicate disadvantage. They include income levels and education levels, as well as rates of employment or unemployment, rates of homelessness, home ownership, rates of disability, chronic disease, mental illness, rates of drug and alcohol dependence, life expectancy, contact with the criminal justice system, and the likelihood of being a victim of violent crime in the next 12 months.

There's a whole range of measures and Aboriginal people are over-represented in all of these categories. And, we experience this disadvantage every day.

Now, I would like one day for this model to be redundant; for disadvantage not to play a part in Aboriginal experience and for the only difference between Aboriginal people and other Australians is our culture. But the reality is that we're not there yet.

I also want to make clear that culture and disadvantage don't have a causal relationship. One of the reasons I developed this model in this manner is an experience I had when I was studying at Macquarie University. In my first politics tutorial someone said, 'I understand why Aboriginal people in remote areas are disadvantaged, but why are Aboriginal people in cities disadvantaged - they don't even have their culture.'

I realised that some people think that our culture is the reason we're disadvantaged.

I want to make it really clear that our culture is our strength. The stronger our knowledge and connection with culture, the stronger we are as a people, as individuals, families, and communities. The disadvantage is not a result of our culture. We, and our culture, existed for millennia before we experienced disadvantage. The disadvantage is as a result of the last 230-odd years of history in this country.

So, you must learn about the history of this country and its impact - the disadvantage we see every day in Aboriginal communities.

Three. Discrimination

The third element of Aboriginal experience is discrimination. Aboriginal people experience discrimination every day. I'm not overstating that when I say every day. I cannot turn on the television, read the news, or walk down the street without seeing, hearing, or experiencing something discriminatory or outright racist, whether it's directed at me or not. And, everyday that has an impact, and over a lifetime it takes a toll.

So, you must learn about discrimination, and work to eliminate it from your workplace and systems, if not your hearts and minds.

This is my model of Aboriginal experience.

You need to consider all three elements of Aboriginal experience in order to be able to approach Aboriginal employment and work to improve it.

As I said, I'd like to see this model become redundant in my lifetime. I'd like discrimination and disadvantage not to be characteristic of Aboriginal experience.

I'd like the only thing that makes an Aboriginal person an Aboriginal person, to be culture. But that is not the case at the moment in this country.

And, in order to improve Aboriginal employment, we need to consider all three of these areas.

If you think of this like an iceberg. Culture is the peak of the iceberg. It's above the surface, the thing that you first think about and is easily seen. But, like an iceberg, it's what's below the surface - the part that you don't immediately see or think about - that does the real damage.

Below the surface lurk discrimination, racism, disadvantage. This is what will sink your Aboriginal employment ship.

So, if you want to do better with Aboriginal employment you need to consider all three elements of Aboriginal experience.

It's not just culture, it's Aboriginal experience.

You need to learn about Aboriginal experience. You need to recognise the diversity of Aboriginal people and their experiences, as well as the commonalities. You need to learn about each of these elements in different ways from different sources, again and again. You need to commit to lifelong learning. You must recognize that you can never know it all.

Even as an Aboriginal person, I'd never say I know everything about Aboriginal experience, because I haven't experienced what someone else has experienced, and they haven't experienced what I've experienced. But there's a lot of commonalities that we share.

You need to learn about all of these elements in different ways from different sources in order to be able to do better and be better.

Because, it's not just culture. And, it’s more than disadvantage.

When you're implementing Aboriginal employment initiatives in your workplace are you thinking about more than culture? Are you considering all elements of Aboriginal experience.

Ask yourself if you are applying this principle every time you think about an Aboriginal employment initiative.

How does this principle apply to what it is you're doing or planning to do?

I encourage you to think deeply about how this principle applies to what it is you're doing or planning to do with Aboriginal employment. It will help guide you on the right path with the right approach.

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