That is the question I put to a room not long ago, and I want to tell you about the room before I tell you what the question did.
It was a cultural immersion program for the leaders of a government department in regional Victoria. The privilege of being asked into that space is not lost on me. To work at that executive level of an organisation, using cultural facilitation to help drive change, is space Aboriginal people have fought for. The people who hosted us, and every person who sat and stayed in that room through some pretty uncomfortable conversations, all of you made that space deadly. By the time I got to my question, we had already been working through brave conversations and brave spaces. Everyone had begun to feel comfortable in the space and comfortable in uncomfortable conversations. People had already started leaning into what they didn't know. Everyone had turned up. It was a brave space, and we had all been in it long enough to trust it.
The CEO was there, and a whole bunch of really influential people. So I said it. After a pause, standing in the middle of the group (Because I had doubts about saying it!) I have a degree. I have a master's. I have Executive Leadership Training from Harvard Business School. So what is it about the work I do that isn't good enough? Why don't you think of me for leading team building, for leadership development, for strategic vision, for operational planning, for management structures?
I paused.
Why is it that we only choose Aboriginal leaders and consultants to work on solving Aboriginal problems? I am not the only Aboriginal person who can do this work, so why don't you think of us?
There was a pause in the room.
The room was still. Nobody reached for their phone. Nobody wanted to move. Not because they were scared of offending, but because they were deeply thinking about what had just been said.
I wanted to use a direct approach and be Brave. I turned it on myself, one person, on purpose. It is easier to receive this feedback in a brave space, where the person in front of you is vulnerable enough to challenge a difficult conversation, especially when that conversation relates directly to them. So I stood vulnerable, in front of them. "Tell me why?" I said.
The CEO spoke first. He said he had never considered it. He said it was a shift in mindset for him, a real growth moment. I want to be clear about what happened there, because it matters. A leader with the power to act and create change did so and in that moment I was no longer vulnerable standing, I was supported. Not alone, now I have a friend. He said "I hadn't thought of that" out loud. That takes more courage than most keynote speeches. It is also really important, and not only from a leadership perspective. Nobody in that room is the villain of this story. This is the system we live in, based on what we have been taught, and it is a system that needs to be recognised and shifted.
Over the next few days, because of the trust that had been built in the room, the conversations kept going. They were about Aboriginal people from a strengths-based position. People asked me what other work I do outside the facilitation I was there for, and why wouldn't they want to use more Aboriginal people? It makes complete sense, they said. And some were dumbfounded, and not at me. At their own thinking. You could see people arrive at it: oh, wow, you're right. We're in a system that has taught us to see Aboriginal people as less. Or not up to it. This was a real eye-opening moment for the entire group.
Deficit thinking did its work. Now the biases drive our thinking, and this is the bit we need to change. I know, logically, that of course Aboriginal people are good enough. But the bias is the same: the deficit thinking was letting them think it. If you don't understand deficit thinking, it is simply the way we think differently when we put the word Aboriginal before or after something. The classic example: think "Housing" now "Aboriginal housing." Did you think of two different things?
Here is the part I struggle with (And also love). Aboriginal people are very good at facilitation. I would strongly argue it is cultural for us. Facilitation isn't only between people. It is between space and all the things around us. That is why I lean into calling myself a cultural facilitator: we are always working in systems. Our mob have been gathering, listening, discerning, deciding and finding solutions for a very long time. Complex change, system change, brave conversations: we have been running those rooms as long as anyone has written about them, as long as there has been a management textbook about them. The skill is here. It has always been here. The system just keeps handing us smaller jobs, because that is the way it is designed.
What changed in that room also changed how they saw me. In fairness, they were all very respectful people, reserved and respectful. What we had done was create a brave space to have a conversation about the way we view First Nations and Aboriginal leaders. I was no longer the facilitator who had come in for the day. For them, I became a leader who could work in the kind of spaces I have described, and they started talking to me like one.
So the next time something in your organisation needs rebuilding, a team, a strategy, a better way of having hard conversations, look at the list of people you would call. Then look at who is missing from it. The people missing from that list are where the system has failed, and they are ready to be called.
I am not the only one who belongs on it. There are Aboriginal leaders across this country who can walk into those rooms and change them. I would just like you to think of us.
Be brave, stay deadly.