Transcript: Centring Our Ways: Speaking back to the social enterprise sector

Music Lady Blue- Emily Wurramara

Genevieve Grieves: Welcome, everyone, to this online learning session. My name’s Genevieve, and I’ll introduce myself properly in a moment, but before we begin, I just want to acknowledge the Country that I’m on. I’m on Bidjigal Country, the beautiful eastern coast of Australia. I usually live on Larrakia Country, but I’m very blessed to be on this Country today, with family and closer to where I’m from, which is a beautiful place to be.

I just want to acknowledge all the Black social enterprises, all the community orgs, all the Black businesses across the country who are doing incredible work in their communities to change Australia in so many different ways. Their work often goes unrecognised and unsupported, and we felt very privileged to be able to engage with some of them to share the knowledge that we are about to today. We just want to acknowledge broadly their contribution to our country, and thank them for all this work that they do to make change on so many levels.

So we’re Shifting Ground, and we’ll talk a little bit more about who we are in a moment, but we were lucky to receive some funding from Social Enterprise Australia to do a First Nations social enterprise circle, which we did a couple of months ago in Garramilla, in Darwin.

Thanks, Kate.

And who we are. So I’m Genevieve Grieves. I’m a Worimi woman from the Mid North Coast. I’m one of the co-founders of Shifting Ground. I’ve been an educator for many years, both in tertiary contexts and in community contexts, which is what Shifting Ground is really about: taking knowledge and bringing it to all parts of our society to deepen our practice of how we work together and how we ethically make change together. So very proud to be part of Shifting Ground. I’m also a storyteller who works in film and different formats to share stories for change.

I’m going to pass over to my co-facilitator today, Amanda, to introduce herself.

Amanda Sibosado: Thank you, Gen. Thanks for that lovely acknowledgement. I’m joining everyone today from beautiful Whadjuk Noongar Boodja, part of the Noongar nation. I’m a proud Bardi woman and Wardandi Noongar woman on my paternal side, and settler colonial heritage on my mother’s side. I’m a mother and a sister to five brothers and a PhD scholar, and I’ve got a lot of experience facilitating groups, predominantly in sexual health, over my career. And so it’s been really beautiful to join Shifting Ground as a Senior Program Manager and facilitator for their amazing content.

Such a privilege to work here with such amazing people, and it was just an incredible privilege to be part of the circle and to learn so much from all of the participants about their journeys as First Nations social enterprises. And just so amazing to get the chance to connect with them where I was born, actually, and where my parents married, in the botanical gardens where we held the event. So really excited to be here today with everybody and share this incredible work.

Genevieve Grieves: And these are some of the other members of our team. So we’re an intercultural team. We’re very diverse, not just First Nations cultural backgrounds, but cultural backgrounds more broadly. We’re largely women, and we’ve been doing this work unofficially for more than 10 years and set up our own social enterprise a couple of years ago. And this actually doesn’t represent all the breadth of Shifting Ground, because we have a number of facilitators from across the country who work in their own locations with different organisations. But just deep kudos to our team, who put so much extraordinary work into this learning circle and report, including Kate, who’s with us today, who was really crucial in documentation and just holding the space with us. So yeah, we’re very grateful to have such a gifted team.

So a little bit about what we’re going to do today. We’ve written a report, and we’re here to share some of that with you. We had an extraordinary few days together, which Amanda will talk more about, and give you an overview of what actually happened and how we held this space; what we actually discovered through those couple of days connecting with each other on Larrakia Country; what came out about the needs of our enterprises, and these enterprises were very diverse, from small and emerging to sort of vast and experienced; our recommendations to the sector; and then also a values map. I just actually can’t believe how much we got done in a couple of days, but we did get quite a lot that we’ll be sharing with you.

And this is a beautiful quote from the circle: “I think that so often these reports, they don’t even get read. We put our heart and soul and spirit into these and they just sit there.”

And this was something for all our participants, who travelled from all across the country and then gifted us deep knowledge and experience for the greater good. They were all committed to the process because they want to see the best happen in this sector, and they want other Black social enterprises to be supported. But there was a fear that we’d write a report and we’d pull all this beautiful knowledge together and then nothing would ever happen. So we’re grateful to have this chance today to speak back to the sector and ask that you all listen with open hearts and minds. Because really, in these words that we’re sharing today is the opportunity for real change.

And I just also wanted to say that none of these First Nations social enterprises had ever been funded by the social enterprise sector. So it’s also a great gift that they gave so much when none of them actually really received that dedicated support. So there was a big commitment to making change, and a lot of beautiful knowledge gifted that we’ll share with you today. Thanks.

Amanda Sibosado: And so these were the beautiful participants Gen was just talking about. Although we’ve called them community members in the report, in line with our ways of being, doing, and knowing, we always see ourselves as community members first. And so I just really want to acknowledge everyone: Regina, Sam, Joyce, Fiona, Liandra, Ben, Britt, Chloe, and Libby. Again, as Gen said, for their wisdom, love, and support through the circle and post as well. We’ve been very collaborative in the process of doing the report, as much as we can be with tight timeframes and all those things. So we’ve had a few meetings and emails and touching base with everyone, and going through the slides with everybody yesterday. So they’ve very much been involved in this whole process and really shown a big commitment to it. So yes, it wouldn’t have been possible without all of their holding, I think, as well.

And so before we convened the circle, there were two kind of intentions in thinking about our work together. We wanted to expand the sector’s recognition of what First Nations enterprise looks like in practice, and to ensure that the First Nations enterprise leaders would see themselves reflected and identified in the program as well.

And we know that social enterprise definitions have a tendency to centre certification and legal structures, and reflect processes and criteria that sometimes are kind of gatekeepers for our First Nations social enterprises. And so we wanted to make sure, in recruiting participants to the circle, that our definition of what that meant was deliberately broad, so we weren’t excluding anybody. So they didn’t need to have certification to attend. And I think we knew that that was the right decision to begin with, but that was certainly affirmed through the conversations that we were having, and is certainly reflected in the report: that even those who were originally set up to be, I guess, for-profit enterprises were doing so much good in their community, and giving so much back to the communities that they worked with and partnered with, and having impact in everything that they did. And we’ll talk about that more as we go through things.

In terms of the approach to the circle, we really wanted to structure it as a place to connect, to deeply listen to each other, to have lots of space and time to reflect, and to be creative. We took a really strength-based and trauma-informed approach to the work. We had lovely workbooks; you can maybe just see some at the bottom of our beautiful tree that’s in that slide there. We built a big mango tree on the second day, so it was all very interactive as well. We made space for lots of movement. We did a guided meditation, and then we did an incredible amount of work, weaved through that as well.

So we really wanted to acknowledge that when Mob gather, we don’t just bring the knowledge that we hold as individuals. We bring along with us the knowledge of our ancestors, of our communities, of all the people and places that we have been and touched. And so it was really important that we held a space that was going to be safe for everybody to deep dive and explore those things and connect, because we just don’t get the opportunities to connect in these ways very often and to have these nuanced conversations. So just to be in a space together is always such a gift.

And then we came back, and the second day was just massive. We did an incredible amount of work, and again, just really want to acknowledge all of the energy that everybody brought to that. Lots and lots of writing, lots of very, very deep chats that have resulted particularly in the values map that we’ll be presenting later in the presentation today. And then we had the task, I guess, of going back with huge amounts of data, which we’ve really called stories in the report and in what we’re presenting today, and taking all of that heart and soul and love and staunch energy in the room and turning it into a powerful report and the presentations. And that was a task that we did not take lightly, in terms of our responsibility to our beautiful new family and friends that we made during our time together.

So I feel like a lot of the discussions that we had are really encapsulated by this quote in a lot of ways. There were a lot of big conversations across both days, weaved through everything that we spoke about and touched on in every activity, that were really about, I guess, the whole point of wanting to do the values map as well. It’s about really wanting to make clear what we prioritise and what we hold and how we show up in the world, and the level of heart and commitment that we bring to everything that we do. And so: if our ways were centred, being a First Nations social enterprise would feel less like pushing against a system and more like standing in a system that holds you.

And within that, we just have so many strengths that we bring, with the heart that we bring to the work that we do and the love that we bring to the work that we do, and how we carry what’s best for our communities and Country and place with us every day, in every moment.

And so fundamentally, we have a lot of different challenges that we need to deal with in terms of the complexities of operating in these colonial systems that were not designed for us. But in this section, it’s very much about how we’re able to simultaneously deliver social impact, and the ways in which we contribute to political sovereignty and self-determination through the social enterprises, serving as vehicles for challenging these colonial structures and narratives.

And I think these quotes capture it beautifully. They also capture, I guess, how we can view impact differently sometimes as well, in thinking about how we relate and connect with people, and how sometimes those small moments of impact speak volumes, in terms of the work that we do and the ripple effect that that has on one person’s life, versus some of the things that we need to be reporting on in different ways. So I really love these quotes here.

Your self-expression of self-determination can be a beacon to somebody else, to see that they also can do it differently. First Nations people hold people in relationships with love and care. We spoke about the word love, and that it’s not used enough in the work that we do. There was a real strength in this collective nature of our Mob. And I think for us, the type of work we do is really responding to community and being led by community, and there’s such a strength in that, in having that backing from the people and the places that we connect with and love and care about.

Now, what makes it difficult, as we’ve kind of already mentioned, should probably come as no surprise: a lot of it comes back to the ongoing impacts of colonisation, and really racism in this country, in many ways. And in this section, we had two major themes, with a whole range of sub-themes under each. The first was really more around the colonial load that we have to carry: the additional work that’s required in terms of having to challenge systems and white ways and Western ways of thinking. And then the other one was around this legacy of colonisation that’s led to sometimes unequal access to business knowledge and networks and the different things that are kind of required to set ourselves up for success.

This is one of my favourite quotes, I think, from the workshop, around resistance: “For us, resistance is a constant job, to be empowered to remain true to our ways. In everything we do, we just need to make sure that we don’t lose our identity.” And then they were talking about another space where they don’t have to show up like that. But the reality is, this resistance is because of the systemic and systematic oppression we face. And so it’s this real extra burden that non-Indigenous social enterprises really don’t need to consider in their day-to-day work in the same way.

And so I’ll just go over some of those points, some of the themes around that. So, the ongoing education about our ways of being, doing, and knowing, and our ways of working, and how we know we need to work with community to make sure that things are community-led. And that quote in the bottom right-hand corner really speaks to that: people saying that they want a particular thing, or even in funding applications as well, needing to be very specific about what it is that you’re going to be doing and how you’re going to be doing it. But then, when we’re really wanting to do community-led work, you need to be flexible and responsive, and that shifts and changes if you really are co-creating or co-designing that work with the communities that you’re working with. And so you don’t really know what’s going to come out of it and what’s going to happen and how that’s going to be, because once you get everybody in the room, and that was certainly the case with us as well, the conversations that need to happen are the conversations that happen, and that’s what you end up producing and reporting back on.

There was also a really concerning trust deficit that was spoken about in the group, and I think that’s really important to point out. That’s the middle quote on the slide, around customers being nervous to buy from Black brands, and that it’s something where you have to actually build trust with customers so that they buy the products. And when we had a look at the literature when we came back after the circle, that was really reflected in some of the existing literature, as well as in the lived experience of those that were at the circle. And so that takes a whole lot of extra work, having to prove that you’re trustworthy in these systems.

And then there was an additional bureaucratic burden that we need to navigate as well. Given that our values and ways of being, doing and knowing are not always understood or valued in those Western systems, there’s a significant burden in attempting to make how we need to work and represent our stories and communities fit into these Western frameworks. We need to reword things, we need to overexplain things often, unpack definitions of things, and force things to fit into these neat little boxes that aren’t always written with us in mind. And so, yeah.

Now, reactive prioritisation. I feel like for me, as soon as I heard some of the quotes from participants around this, I instantly thought of Steph Tisdell. I don’t know if any of you have seen her stand-up comedy work, and she talks a lot about how, when there’s big global events, like the Olympics or whatever, First Nations peoples are rolled out like fine silverware, with this pride that we don’t often see or feel in our everyday lives. And the community certainly felt this in the sector as well: that at times there’s this sudden flurry of work to elevate First Nations enterprises, but then it’s quiet in those in-between times, and that’s also, again, quite exhausting for us.

And then additionally, in all the work that we need to do, there’s this resistance and advocacy piece, which I’d already spoken to with the quote on the other page. It’s a constant thing that we need to advocate for ourselves and for our communities, and there’s a large weight and emotional energy that goes into this additional work.

There were also lots of conversations around finding culturally safe supports, be that lawyers or accountants, the range of different professionals that you need around you, that need to be committed to your vision and committed to the work that you’re doing. And there was a particularly good example around stories of where people have found the right people, and the massive impact that that’s had, and how they’ve been able to rework things with their accounting and tax and things like that to make it possible for them to still show up for their families and communities in the way that they need to culturally, but still working within those systems in the right ways at the same time. So there are ways of doing that, and there were examples of that, but it was seen as really, really important, and hard to find those supports that are culturally safe.

And there was a lot of conversation around financial risk, and different views around financial risk, and that was really diverse in the group that was present and their opinions around that. But there was a lot of chat around the fact that we don’t necessarily have access to houses, or to large amounts of money, the capacity to redraw, and things like that. And so we’re not starting from the same starting point as a lot of non-Indigenous enterprises.

Genevieve Grieves: So in terms of what our First Nations social enterprises need, there were a lot of conversations, and people were really clear on what was required to elevate the work that they were doing, whether they were emerging or had been around for some time.

Everyone needed improved access to support, and it was knowing where to go, knowing how to interface with those systems of support. There were seen to be so many bureaucratic layers at different orgs, and it was all quite confusing in terms of how people were able to access that support. And then, the examples that Amanda just gave about the lack of culturally safe support. That could be quite a negative interaction if you ended up with the wrong person, and they’d say, oh well, you may as well give up, or they could be holding quite racist perspectives themselves. So it can be quite dangerous in terms of who you’re interacting with at which stage of your journey. So everyone required more support and different forms of support.

Peer learning and community connection was so needed by everyone. There was such a sense of joy in the social enterprise learning circle, of coming together, of sharing knowledge, of building community. People were quite isolated in different ways. They might be part of a bigger org with a big support system around them, but some people were a single person trying to establish a business or an org, and that could be quite difficult, just not to have people around who were doing the same sort of work as you or that you could learn from. So there was a real desire for more opportunities to connect, and the quote speaks to that too: “I think opportunities for us to come together nationally to share, like a conference, a gathering, I think it’s essential, because otherwise you just end up in a silo.” Because you’re so busy doing, you need to get what you need to get done, and everyone was working so hard, up against it in terms of all the challenges that Amanda was speaking to. So that peer connection was just super important to everybody.

Funding systems led by us. So really thinking about the structures that exist and how they value really Western ways of doing, being, and knowing, and that those systems need to be shifted to reflect our ways of doing, being, and knowing, and that we should have greater input and control over those systems. As I said, all these enterprises hadn’t benefited from these systems yet in any way, financially. So that was a big question for everyone: why are we not benefiting from the funding that exists to support an ecosystem like ours? So there was a lot of conversation about that, which connects to self-determination and power redistribution.

So we need ourselves embedded, I guess, in all the layers of the social enterprise sector, whether it’s in those positions of power within orgs, or being able to frame the way that the sector works and intersects with First Nations people and communities. So that was a very strong desire, for us to have more power at the points where it matters, in terms of determining those frameworks and systems.

And a unified voice. So there was a lot of talk about, again, all the layers. There’s many different organisations. They differ depending on what state you’re in; there’s different levels of support. It’s quite confusing as a system to access support. So there’s the disparate nature of the sector, but also, if we’re able to come together more to share knowledge, to self-determine how this system works, then we can advocate in a better way. We can have more power, rather than as individuals trying to access a system that’s not really designed for us. So that coming together, and those opportunities for collective voice and collective power, were really desired by the group.

So, the recommendations from this community, this little community that came together for two days. As you can see, a ridiculous amount of work in two days. Can’t believe how much was done. But these are the recommendations that come from this collective that gathered in Garramilla for two days.

So really, and most importantly, everyone’s asking for a response to this report. Going back to that quote earlier on in this presentation, these reports get created, people give a lot of time and knowledge and energy into being consulted or giving their experience, and it’s really important to this group that they hear back from the sector. So what actions can be taken from this report? What will shift? What will change? Because this collective of eight people from across the country have given a lot, and they would like something back in terms of a response from the sector. And this is not only because of these two days. It’s because of a whole history of extractive consultation. As this recommendation says, we are the most over-consulted and over-researched group of people, really, in the world. So there’s an opportunity here for the sector to speak back, and that’s really critical in developing trust, but also transparency and relational accountability. So we look forward to a response from the sector in some way to this report, and that’s a clear ask from this group of people.

We’d like more opportunities to come together. So more opportunities for community building, sharing knowledge, sharing support. And we can testify to the power of this experience we had on Garramilla Country. It was affirming, it was strengthening, and we need those spaces to come together and share.

Support First Nations social enterprises to advocate for our needs to be met. This was an amazing opportunity to have a platform to be able to advocate and to speak back to the sector, but it was a small opportunity. It was a couple of days, and really we need more of those opportunities. And we also had a huge, huge number of applicants, and it was extremely difficult to pick eight. There were a lot of other people we wanted to contribute to these conversations, who want to connect with their peers. So we’d love to see that continue.

Improve access to information and support for First Nations social enterprises. As we said, it was consistent across most of the people in the group that they didn’t necessarily know where to go or what support to get, or had difficulty finding the culturally safe support they needed. So almost everyone was at that point where they’re like, I really need this support, I really need this help, and I’m not sure where to get it. And navigating the current framework is challenging for people, to actually find that support.

Increased First Nations representation at Social Enterprise Australia and in other social enterprise leadership and policy organisations. So this was a very clear recommendation from the group: that we need more First Nations leadership in the sector, and that’s something that people felt was lacking across the country. That was a consistent position that people had, and we really need that First Nations leadership at that level in order to integrate our ways of doing, being and knowing, in order for us to have those culturally safe interfaces with the sector. So that’s just a really crucial point.

Formalising opportunities for skill and knowledge sharing between business experts and First Nations social enterprises. There was a lot of workshopping of what was needed, because, as I said, everyone had different needs, and kind of critical needs at this point, in order to grow or expand or continue their social enterprise. There’ll be more detail in the report, but it’s an area that needs to be evolved, because people are really struggling to find the right support. And maybe there’s a project that could be evolved out of that to make it easier for these incredible social enterprises to access the support they need.

And further investigation into the development of a national First Nations enterprise body. So this was talked about quite a lot: that instead of maybe trying to fix the sector and weave in our ways of doing, being and knowing, maybe we’d have more power and more opportunity if we had a body that represented our needs and our ways of doing, being and knowing. And people were saying it could really help with that fragmentation that existed across all the states. It could be a way for us to have a unified voice, a way for us to advocate. So that was a very strong idea that had a lot of support amongst the group.

Amanda Sibosado: I’m very, very proud to present to the group today our values map. The whole report is a culmination of this work, but it was just so beautiful to have the time and space to reflect on this together, and to really do, probably not as deep a dive as we would have liked, but a fairly deep dive into what these values are, and what they mean to us, and how we show up in our day-to-day work.

And so I just want to really take this opportunity to assert again that First Nations ways of being, doing, and knowing naturally position our enterprises as social enterprises, because we live and breathe our values in everything that we do. We really wanted to present this map as a contribution to the ongoing work that the social enterprise sector is doing and needs to do to get in right relationship with First Nations people and knowledges.

It was really important for the group that we said this. We all agreed as a collective that there were eight enterprises represented there, and we’re not every enterprise across Australia, so it’s just really important to name that up. And it’d be great to have, again, more opportunity to connect with other people and to deepen this work, really. This is just a starting point. So just wanted to acknowledge that.

A bit about the map. Our ways of being, doing and knowing, as I’ve already mentioned, don’t fit into neat little boxes. And so I think sometimes values maps have all these complex lines and webs that talk about how each one joins another one and how they’re interrelated. Well, for us, we just feel like they’re all interrelated. They all overlap. They’re all in this green circle, with the coolamon holding it, floating around and overlapping and connecting at different points and in different ways. So it’s meant to be fluid in that sense. And for that reason, when you do have a chance to look at the actual report as well, there is some repetition in language, because that’s just how interrelated these values are.

So I’m going to start with the connection section. Sorry, before I go into the actual core values, connection, in that bit, Kate. Sorry, everybody, not sure.

I just want to talk a little bit about the coolamon first, really. It was very, very clear from the group that resistance was the shield that we hold. That was said. That’s what keeps us strong, and it’s necessary in all of the work that we do, and that’s what we have up in front of us to protect our other values, and to maintain and hold true to those other values and really embody them. But with connection, there were a lot of different conversations around where different ones went and how it all fitted in together, but we landed at connection really being the thing that holds us.

So I’m actually just going to read a bit of the report, because I just feel like we captured it beautifully there.

So, the coolamon talks about the living web of relationships between people, family, kin, community, Country, ancestors, and spirit that holds everything together and carries it forward. Connection is not one value among many; rather, it’s a vessel that makes all the other values possible, and the reason that we do any of this work at all. Without connection, there’s no knowing your place, because it is our relationships that tell us where we stand and who holds us accountable. Without connection, there’s no right way or protocol, because it’s not a rule book; it’s a living practice that flows through relationships. Without connection, humility has no anchor, sharing has no direction, and collective good has no heart. Connection is what makes self-determination meaningful, because our sovereignty has never been about the individual. It’s always been about our people, our Country, and the generations who came before and will come after us.

So, integrity. This is about acting in alignment between who we are, what we believe, and what we do, and being transparent when we fall short. There were a lot of conversations across all the values, really, about the need to be honest and transparent about where we are, where we sit, who we are, what we bring, what we don’t bring, our own stories. But for us as well, it’s about acting in accordance with Law, actually probably lore, and holding ourselves accountable to community. And again, that resistance piece is really threaded through each of the values, because it’s always about having the courage to name when something isn’t right.

Collective good. This is our commitment to working, deciding, and building in ways that serve the present and future community, rather than just the individual. And so there was a lot of conversation around community over competition, and acknowledging that that can be really hard, again, in these systems, because we’re competing for funding and we’re pitted against each other in many ways. But really trying to maintain that value of collective good, and thinking, how do we support one another, again, with these great opportunities to connect as a community? How do we plant these seeds? How do we pass on knowledge, not just to much younger generations, but to everybody else that is working in the sector at the same time as us? How do we share knowledge and not gatekeep that? And recognising the strength in our collective communities.

Caring. And I think this is where a lot of that love was spoken about as well, in that conversation, with the quote that was earlier. It’s this active commitment to holding our relationships to others, including our family, community, land, and future generations, with genuine love and respect and attention. We talked a lot about needing to have a holistic approach. Although that’s mentioned in this value, that was spoken about a lot also with the gaps in support that we talked about earlier: wanting to be seen as whole people, because that’s how we show up to the work that we do, and we want that reflected back to us. And we also talked a lot about needing to care for yourself as well, and grappling with that. It’s actually not selfish to care for ourselves, even while holding our communities and their importance so tight. It’s also about looking after ourselves so that we can show up.

Right way. This was one that was really a bit difficult to unpack, because it’s really part of our innate ways of being, doing and knowing, and how we show up. But this was really about cultural processes, having the right permissions, being accountable to community and Country rather than external systems.

Humility, the need for humility. Understanding that we’re always learning, we’re always being taught; that none of us holds the full picture alone; and owning our mistakes and our limitations. Again, you see a bit of repetition in language.

Deep listening, the need to deep listen, so that we actually understand everything, and who we are and how we fit in, and the knowledge that’s being shared with us, and holding that knowledge with privilege, being serious about the knowledge that is shared with us, and understanding what’s being asked of us.

And sharing: the responsibility to pass on knowledge, experience, and resources freely, and not gatekeeping our knowledge, which again comes back to the collective good. You can see very quickly how it all just flows and interacts with each other.

Awesome. So that’s our beautiful values map. The report will be available very, very soon to everybody, so you can have a much deeper dive into the content and see much more of the beautiful quotes from everybody, and all of their words. We’ve really tried to not overanalyse what people said, and really just centred the voice of our beautiful community members. So I really hope that you enjoy that, and we can work together to think about what this body of work really means for the sector moving forward.

And I’ll hand over to you, Gen.

Genevieve Grieves: Thank you, Amanda. We’re coming to the end of our formal presentation. As Amanda said, the report will be available soon, and we might do some final words just at the end of this session. But we’d like to open it up now for any questions or thoughts, feelings from the audience, so please feel free to share something with us now or in the chat. And we’ve allowed you all in, so we can all see each other now. Yeah, so much nicer being able to see who’s in the call. Yeah. So please feel free, if you have any questions or thoughts that you’d like to share in this space, please do.

David Brookes: Gen and Amanda, thank you for the presentation. I think the timing of this is really great, as the sector moves to progress the national social enterprise strategy, which includes a commitment to First Nations.

Just had a couple of comments or questions. The recommendation that you shared around seeking a response to the report from the sector: just interested if you’re able to comment about what form that response should take. Whether it should be a written response, or a response back to the group in person, or a bit of both. That was one question.

And the other comment or question was in relation to the recommendation about a national First Nations enterprise body, and whether you’re envisaging something that’s completely separate from existing infrastructure, from existing bodies, or whether that First Nations enterprise body could be autonomous but be part of an existing body like Social Enterprise Australia, while retaining autonomy. Thank you.

Genevieve Grieves: Thank you, David, for those wonderful questions. Amanda, do you want to start with the first one? Do you want to respond at all?

Amanda Sibosado: I don’t really think we dove into detail in terms of how best to have the response, and I’m more than happy to take that back to this group. But I think it probably is more about, I don’t know, what do you think, Gen? It’s not really just responding to this group, you know what I mean? It’s really a broader kind of response. And so the question made me kind of excited, because I thought, what could it be?

Genevieve Grieves: Yeah, what could the response be? Because the group didn’t specify, so I’d love for people to think about what that looks like. What is a sort of adequate, or more than adequate, adequate’s not the right word, but what would be an ethical way to respond to this gift of knowledge? What could that be? And should it be written? Should it be spoken? Should it be in person? What should it be? I think it’s a great question to explore. What does that look like when we’re talking about ethical relational work? How do we connect to each other more deeply across these lines, which are often bureaucratic lines? How do we start to speak to each other in a more human way? So I love the question. I love that you’re thinking about it, and I’m really looking forward to hearing some answers to that at some point. Thank you.

Yeah. And the second one, Amanda, what do you think, from the findings or the conversation around it? Was there anything in particular you recall?

Amanda Sibosado: Well, no, not. I would have. I feel like it was definitely more separate, and completely its own thing, from what our community had said. But I think there’s a reason that we put “investigate” at the front of that recommendation, basically because it’s again acknowledging there were eight enterprises represented in the room. So, in following the values map that we’ve presented here, that would need to be more broadly consulted on. But it was definitely much more around a completely separate entity.

And I know that’s a conversation that we’re always having, no matter what sector or place: do we build our own organisations, or do we change the systems that we’re working in? And for me personally, I feel like you need a bit of both. We need that extra representation in the existing systems, and ideally to have our own as well, and that they work together. That’s kind of my thought, but yeah.

David Brookes: Thank you.

Genevieve Grieves: Yeah, thank you, David. We’ve got a comment from Moragh. Moragh, I’m sorry, I’m probably not saying your name right. But you’re calling in from the Taungurung Land and Waters Council. Yeah, amazing. Lovely to have you.

Any other questions or comments? I noticed that Dimity, can you speak?

Dimity Podger: Yes, I’m in for the moment. I’m sharing an office, apologies. Oh, I was just thinking about the approach, the application of the principles to inspire what might happen next, and what that invitation is or could be around how you might go about addressing those recommendations in a values-inspired way, recognising the shield and all of the things that you’ve shared. But yeah.

Genevieve Grieves: Amanda.

Amanda Sibosado: So I actually missed the start of that, Gen. So you can.

Genevieve Grieves: Yeah, I’ve been. Sorry. I think, Dimity, and I’m looking at your comments as well, thank you. So you were talking about the values map, and were you talking about the next steps?

Dimity Podger: It was David questioning what this response would be from the social enterprise sector to the research and gift of knowledge and guidance from the circle, and the opportunity to engage in a values-aligned way, with the values map, to approach what that response is, and how to move towards what would be important outcomes that resonate with your community.

Genevieve Grieves: Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, and I think that’s a really beautiful idea. And just building on that, there was a desire in the group for this work to continue in some form, so that the two days we had together weren’t the end of it. Obviously asking for a response, but also, there are some big ideas in that report that do need teasing out and need further investigation and conversation. So from the position of that values map, that would be a beautiful way to keep engaging with this group, or more broadly across the First Nations social enterprise ecology. Yeah.

Amanda Sibosado: Yeah. On that note, I just want to add, it was incredibly difficult to choose who was going to be present at the circle. The applications were so strong. There are so many beautiful people doing absolutely amazing work out there. Yeah, it was awful, actually, having to make decisions.

Genevieve Grieves: Yeah, it really was.

Amanda Sibosado: And just going, how much we would have loved to have connected with everybody that had applied. So yeah.

Genevieve Grieves: Yeah, and there were extraordinary organisations and businesses that didn’t make it.

Amanda Sibosado: Yeah, extraordinary. Who were doing just the most amazing work.

Genevieve Grieves: So I just think about how much we gained from two days together. That coming together and sharing knowledge across the whole sector, for us, would be so valuable, to continue that work.

Amanda Sibosado: Yeah, yeah. It was just so validating for people, really hearing each other’s experiences, and that in itself is just so powerful when you are working in those systems where you feel like you’re the only voice. So hearing each other’s stories was fantastic. And there was also a lot of sharing, which we didn’t necessarily put in the presentation, around how people are navigating those things and some of the strategies that they’re using, and really supporting each other to feel more confident in being strong storytellers, and the ways that we can leverage off different things within these systems as well. The importance of that just can’t be understated when you look at all the colonial load stuff that we’ve presented today.

Genevieve Grieves: And there’s a lot of emotion too, wasn’t there, Amanda? And Kate, who was there for all of it too. A lot of feeling. A lot of people brought their whole selves to the experience, navigating really complex things and doing this work for all the right reasons. So it’s a big, big obligation to carry.

Any other thoughts, feelings?

Athanasia Price: I think there’s an excitement. I picked up on some of the excitement of getting to where the group got to in the experience, and we are at this moment where there’s some beautiful threads. Sherryl can speak to this better, but the SEDI initiative enabled a variety of groups to have different conversations that thread into this. And so being able to take a step back, and take some time, and invite people who are interested to continue, the next step could be quite exciting, if we learn the lessons that you’re sharing really generously. So that’s where my head is. Thank you.

Genevieve Grieves: I’m conscious of time, and we’re meant to be wrapping this up at this point. Is that right, everybody who’s got a sense of the clock?

Sherryl Reddy: We’re wrapping up now. 

Genevieve Grieves: Amanda, any final words, thoughts that you’d like to share?

Amanda Sibosado: No, just really fabulous to be here today. Again, thank you for your thoughtful comments and questions at the end, and I really look forward to seeing what direction this all goes in. And as you said about the other SEDI groups as well, this group was really keen to connect with the other circles and the other groups that were funded under this as well. There was a big conversation around that on the second day. So, interested to see where it all goes.

Genevieve Grieves: Well, I’d like to thank Social Enterprise Australia for funding this project and for supporting us to gather this knowledge. We’re grateful for their support, and grateful that we had this opportunity to bring everyone together and share this knowledge.

I want to deeply thank Amanda and Kate for their extraordinary work holding this experience and writing the report. They’ve done such incredible work on gathering what was a huge amount of information. I want to thank all the participants who came and shared their knowledge. This wouldn’t have been the experience it was without them.

I want to thank all of you for coming today and staying with us and listening, and invite you to fill out the Zoom feedback survey as well. Please do that poll before you head off. And really looking forward to the next steps and hearing the response from the sector. I know everyone will be really excited to see whatever form that takes. And we’re happy to be a part of whatever comes next too. 

So thank you all for being with us today, and take good care of yourselves.