In acknowledgement of National Sorry Day and National Reconciliation Week, here at inCommunity, we undertook a whole-of-organisation reflection.
As a busy specialist housing and homelessness service with teams delivering a variety of services across different sites and at different times, we set up a culturally safe and respectful online team channel to discuss what these days mean to us.
Centred on a podcast featuring Elders discussing National Sorry Day as a starting point for the conversation, team members were invited to contribute their thoughts and reflections.
Personal stories and perspectives were shared from First Nations and non-Indigenous team members, each contributing to a discussion on how we can continue to contribute positively and constructively for today and tomorrow.
Here are just some of the themes that arose in our discussion.
Historic Literacy: Truth-Telling
Some of us learned from the sorrow and lived experience of our families, some of us from our friends who were slowly discovering their cultural identity, and many of our team have seen countless people seek our organisation’s support, disconnected from their Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Cultures.
Through these varied learnings, it is clear to our team that the ongoing pain and intergenerational trauma from the forcible removal of children from their families, sadly, carries forward to this day for First Nations community members.
In our online team channel, stories were shared of how families made choices to protect their children, sometimes with devastating consequences. At the same time, meaningful acknowledgement was also given in our group reflection to the inequalities still present today for First Nations Peoples.
Collectively, our team has a shared sense that truth-telling offers us all a way forward, of sharing the real and sad truths of our national history, as the start of a journey of walking together.
A Shared Responsibility
Contributions from across our team also reflected on the shared responsibilities we have to continue conversations like this year-round and on how our team can seek to make cultural learning a part of our everyday work. As case managers, as corporate team members, and as colleagues.
Our First Nations team members acknowledged their sense of cultural safety in this discussion and within our organisation, whilst affirming their openness to sharing more with colleagues who want to continue to learn about their stories.
Among our non-Indigenous team members, there was a common view that, no matter how much we think we know, there is always space to learn from and grow with First Nations Peoples, who are proudly from the oldest continuous living cultures in the world.
inCommunity’s Way Forward
With National Reconciliation Week now officially drawn to a close, the inCommunity team and our brands, inCommunity Connect, Tenancy Skills Institute, and Beddown, are committed to growing and learning as this reflection highlights.
Understanding that we can all be part of positive change in our daily lives, both at work and personally, and that we all play a role in healing, so that as a community we can move forward together with strength and pride.
