In the past 12 months Dr Simon Burgess has provided three presentations/workshops for the Oorala Aboriginal Centre at UNE (August 2016, November 2016, and May 2017). He has been preparing presentations for visiting regional Indigenous secondary school students with aspirations to gain tertiary qualifications. Hosted between UNE Business School and Oorala, and recorded for reference, these presentations included:

• Succeeding in a work team (a presentation particularly concerned with the importance of emotional intelligence)
• Approaching the big decisions (a presentation designed to help young people approach certain major decisions in life with a mature and well-informed perspective)
• Studying at university – especially business (a presentation designed to provide high school students with a clear sense of what studying at university involves; it has a particular focus on studying the various disciplines taught within the Business School, i.e., Economics, Accountancy and Finance, and Management and Marketing)

Simon also produced four brief articles for Oorala, which we are pleased to reproduce here.

Are you already an Indigenous leader? How about becoming one?

Did you know that there are about 12 500 Indigenous businesses in Australia? What’s more: that number has been growing steadily over the past 25 years, and some of those businesses are doing very well. Take the Young Guns Container Crew, for example, a business founded in 2004 by Trent and Scott Young, two brothers with ancestry that belongs to the Koa people of Central Queensland. They’ve built their business on packing and unpacking shipping containers. Annual revenue is currently around $20m and their workforce is 400 and growing. This is exciting stuff. Do you see yourself doing something like that?

Alison Page: Designer, TV panellist, CEO, Partnerships Broker, Company Director

Some people truly live in style: no one proves this more emphatically than professional designer, Alison Page. Since completing a Bachelor of Interior Design in 1997 she has been central to the creation of architectural projects, art installations, furniture and films. And as a woman of Walbanga and Wadi Wadi ancestry, she brings an Aboriginal perspective to all her work. Alison may well be familiar to you already; for eight years she was one of the judges on the ABC TV show, The New Inventors.

An eye for beautiful design is at the core of her being, but she has long been able to draw effortlessly upon a range of highly polished communication, leadership, administrative skills in her professional life. She is therefore constantly being asked to take on other new and interesting roles. In fact it is hard to think of a better person to illustrate the opportunities that can arise when you possess a polished and well-rounded set of business skills.

Mick Davis: innovator

Amongst today’s Australian Indigenous inventors, Mick Davis has got to be one of the best. With professional welding skills and some wonderfully innovative and practical engineering ideas, Davis has built an outstanding small business that is famous for its award-winning farm products and services. First came the Davis Starlifter, a simple yet brilliant device that allows you to elevate 1500 kilogram logs off the ground and to then cut them cleanly and safely with a chainsaw. More recently, the company has developed great expertise in the feedlot design and manufacturing business. In fact that aspect of the business is expanding rapidly, thanks in large part to their invention of The Ropey, a device that secures and tensions cables around posts, and which has huge export potential. Why not listen to what Mick has to say here as he reflects on the history of the business, the challenges of racism and raising finance, and how he sees the company’s future?

Reclaiming a confronting word

“I was so shy when I was a young fella”, explains Dion Devow. “In my first year at university in 1994, I didn’t say a single word until the last tutorial of my first semester. Back then, everything was a shame job, and I thought fellas were just waiting to tear me down. And now it’s the opposite: it’s my black face up there on my website and on Facebook.”

After finishing university Dion gained over 10 years of experience as an Aboriginal Health Worker, and then worked for several further years in support of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ access to legal and education services. “I was lucky to go to university back in the 1990s,” he reflects, “That study, and my love of education, has been foundation for my career, whether in health, justice, higher education or now as a business owner.”

Dion is the founder and owner of Darkies Design, a company that produces clothing and apparel featuring designs that are thoroughly infused with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, language, themes, and humour. He readily acknowledges that the name of his business can be confronting. But as Dion explains, the provocative approach to branding and marketing that his company adopts is entirely intentional. His aim is to unashamedly reclaim the word, to adopt ‘darkie’ as a term of pride: “Obviously the word has been used in a derogatory way historically, and I want to change that. I want to reclaim the word.” To read more about Dion, his business, and his remarkable strategy, see here and here.

Simon has been a lecturer in management at the University of New England since late 2014. As an academic his research interests include business ethics, leadership, and reconciliation. His managerial experiences include the establishment of the headspace centre in Rockhampton (a young mental health centre), consultancy work for not-for-profit organisations, and the management of the Community Development Employment Project in Aurukun. He has also worked in policy development, having been a Senior Project Officer on the Design Team for the Welfare Reform Project led by Noel Pearson at the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership in 2006 and 2007.