 Rai'o, maenai depictionu. D繼 tania receipto. Cadewaia interests i Paews. Ma'非常nais Philip tori i maicawinandu Paews a prophecy I'll give you a quick background on myself and the title of my presentation being embracing traditional owners, it's not technically correct. The pilot project I've been working on is basically a pilot project with an indigenous group, so not necessarily traditional owners, it's a baby step or a small component on the way to us engaging with traditional owners. I just want to clarify that. And to give you some information on my background as to why I'm dealing with this, I have a police background and basically I was a police officer in Queensland for 20 years and I had a lot of community engagement experience in dealing with indigenous people in Far North Queensland as a police officer. And in my role here in the Victoria State Emergency Service, I do a lot of cultural and linguistically diverse community work as well as general community engagement for VIXES in promoting our key messaging and most recently I've been asked to commence a pilot project with indigenous people in the central region area. So just a little bit about me that you can see some old photographs up there in Queensland as a police officer. We had a lot of crime up there, may find it hard to believe. I know Kans is promoted to a lovely tourist place but there was lots of crime up there. And so during my time there I dealt with a lot of indigenous people on many varying aspects and situations and so I'm not claiming to be an expert on the Kuri people, far from it, but I have tried to transpose some of my skills and knowledge from my background into the current role and try to part that knowledge to our volunteers in the SES and today in CFA as well for those of you who don't have any knowledge in trying to commence engagement processes with Kuri people. And just like to point out that the word Kuri, the people I have dealt with so far to date for instance at the Malamalam Indigenous Gathering Place, they are not representative of traditional owners per se, they are representatives of the indigenous people from varying backgrounds including Torres Strait Islanders and those people that I have dealt with are happy to be referred to as the Kuri people but just want to make it clear that not all indigenous people refer to themselves as Kuri people and the word Kuri is generally a term used to describe indigenous people in Victoria and parts of New South Wales, whereas a general term to describe Kuri people in Far North Queensland where I used to work is the Māori people, M-U-R-I. So I just make that clear and so the community that I have dealt with that I'll talk about in my pilot project are various members of the Kuri community who are happy to be called Kuri people who come from all parts of the Ringwood, Box Hill, Maroondah area at the Malamalam Gathering Place. So just a little bit of background for you. On the 24th of March in 2011 all Victorian Government departments were committed to developing Aboriginal inclusion action plans. And I'll just flick through some of the basic points. I won't read it all out for you because there's quite a lot of reading but I tried to put as much information into the slideshow so that if you need to refer to it at a later date you can do so on the USB. Okay and so some of the main points will come up. The word dignity I think is quite important there. I'll just bring them all up. I've got to press the letter N to keep bringing them all up. Now the bottom point to just slid up providing opportunities for Aboriginal people, ministers and departments to form relationships and actively engage with one another probably is where I came in in this new little pilot project that I'm talking about is to try and actively engage with Indigenous people in the Maroondah area. Now the way I did it was in my role I recently came back to Victoria State Emergency Service from the Department of Justice where I was working in consumer affairs and I was asked to start work on this project without much knowledge of the Kuri people in my area at all and so I started doing research and that's what led me to discover the existence of the Mullum Mullum Indigenous Gathering Place and it's at East Ringwood. I made contact with the manager, Les Chessels and explained to him basically, no agenda, no agenda from us. The only thing I'd like to do is come along and meet everyone if possible as an SES person and see if I can start a relationship ultimately to engage with the Kuri people there and to impart from my perspective our key core safety messages and get Kuri people involved in their own personal safety in relation to Storm Flood and Sonami and Earthquake which is our key messaging and at one point I think was probably a very relevant for us. Now the legislation. I put this legislation in just to give a background. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People's Recognition Act 2013 came into force in March 2013. It was due to expire this year. A bill to extend that act for three years was passed on the 6th of March and so that act will now expire in 2018 and so I think the Indigenous people are spoken to to date including some members of Reconciliation Victoria find this legislation extremely important in the process of the Indigenous people being recognised and ultimately the aim is to have a referendum and get the key parts of this legislation into the constitution and it's a huge stepping stone for the Indigenous people and I'll bring up the three main parts of that recognition law. You'll see there that first point recognition acknowledges continuing relationship and the last one there, the parliament on behalf of the people of Australia acknowledges and respects the continuing cultures, languages and heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and so respect, dignity and respect of the two key words that I've taken out of these points in my liaison and my engaging with the Corry people and as I said I'm no expert on Indigenous people I just have had experience with Indigenous people in various formats and I'm learning as I go the acknowledgement I gave at the beginning even though there was a welcome at the very beginning we as part of our ultimate goal to have a Corry inclusion action plan or Aboriginal inclusion action plan is that we will do the traditional welcome the appropriate one wherever we are when we do a public session and this is my second one the first one was half an hour ago in the other lecture and it was good that Rebecca was in there because I was able to consult with her after the lecture to see if I can improve or rectify any comments and she's very helpful in that regard Indigenous lady that did the welcome earlier today that was a very nice meeting her OK, so we commenced our Corry engagement pilot project this year by me as I said finding out about Mullum-Mullum and then getting in touch with Mullum-Mullum and Les, the manager, they refer to themselves there and Mullum-Mullum is the mob and a mob being a collective group of people from various Indigenous backgrounds as I said being Torres Strait Islanders and my goal was to form a relationship with the people at Mullum-Mullum and ultimately get us to a stage where we're good friends basically with the Maroondah SES Unit which was formerly known as the Croydon Unit so what the next stage and then the next stage after that sorry will be stage two we're looking at commencing a similar pilot project in Darraben local government area with the Northgate SES Unit now our counterparts the CFO they have already launched their Corry inclusion action plan on the 28th of May they've done a lot of work in developing their plan we're behind in that aspect at the SES we haven't developed ours yet as I said my pilot project is only a tiny little component of what we would hope to be our Corry inclusion action plan down the track and the CFA's plan is quite comprehensive you can follow the links on the CFA website to read the plan or at their display at the far end of the building they have copies up there and the basic key components of their plan is systemic inclusion data service delivery and emergency management Corry volunteerism, employment, training and economic participation communication, engagement and partnerships so they're the key areas that the CFA had to improve upon with their plan and it's a very comprehensive plan very well put together and they have an excellent video that they made with various CFA regates including indigenous CFA volunteers and if you haven't seen it I would recommend you watch it found it very educational and inspiring the people that they interviewed in that video a lot of commendation from me to the CFA for doing all this work already and as I said Viccess are in the process and we have a lot of work to do too our inclusion action plan will be from a state level as well whereas I'm just concentrating in the central region okay that's the Malamalam Indigenous Gathering Place logo and I was telling a quick story about Malamalam sadly the lease where they are for the gathering place is expiring and they have to find accommodation somewhere else for their community meetings and gathering the place where they are leasing at the moment in Ringwood East is the lease hasn't been renewed as a result of the owners wanting to sell that place for several million dollars obviously unfortunately the Malamalam people have to find somewhere else to meet and some of the engagement that we've done with is assisting in their fundraising and I'll tell you about the trivia night shortly so I've already discussed making initial contact my first actual contact was then as a guest at a community lunch and that Malamalam I have a community lunch every month and anyone's basically welcome any other agency and the first one I went to there was some other agencies there there was the Victoria Police were there and in a very casual friendly environment and I made a point of going not in an SES uniform we have a blue uniform that we can choose to wear at events nothing like that this went in a very casual attire and no agenda I just wanted to be real and honest with the people and try and I suppose get a foot in the door from a SES perspective and that approach did seem to have an impact in my favour and I was able to start building rapport with the people that I met on that day I spoke to them about what we do and it was interesting that the majority were honest with me that they didn't know what the SES did they basically assumed that we had something to do with fire and I do find that and a lot of SES people find that across the board that community education in community education and community engagement that when they speak to members of the community we're associated with fire and that's not a bad thing it's just that we'd also like them to know what we actually do do support the CFA and NSB and other activities as well so following on from that very first meeting and I was honest with that because one of them said to me you look like a cop and a couple went yeah and I said well I'll be honest I was a police officer and in my engaging activities in this type of field of work I often come across other ex-police officers and I think we're good at this role if we apply ourselves because of the skills we've picked up in policing and we can adapt them and transpose them into the roles that we're in now and so I said yes I was a police officer and I had to be honest and I told it at the other talk that I did earlier that in my roles police officer I did make a lot of arrests when I first went to Cairns in Queensland I made 100 arrests in six months and I first six months up there because crime is rampant up there even though it's a lovely tourist place and unfortunately or not unfortunately but as a matter of fact I did arrest Indigenous people along the way and me personally I find arresting people not enjoyable or anything like that and it was through those dealings and experiences and many other positive experiences that I gained an appreciation and an understanding of Indigenous people at a basic level for my level but the key words that I mentioned earlier in my slide respect and dignity something I always maintained as a police officer in dealing with everybody and I've hopefully brought that along today to re-emphasise to you people who may be dealing with Indigenous people or trying to engage with Indigenous people on whatever level that respect and dignity is paramount and I find for me personally in my engagement activities respect and dignity for everybody treating people with respect and dignity indignity not just Indigenous people but everybody helps get me further in my role I may not always appear that way but I do try to adopt that and me personally it works and so I've done up a little list later at the end of the slideshow just as a guide from my perspective of how you'd go about commencing engagement activity as a volunteer any knowledge on how to do so so the next part of that engagement with Mula Mula they invited us to partake in the Kuri Jobs Education and Family Services Expo and that was held at the Gathering Place February this year as I said this is a new little pilot project it's baby steps towards the bigger picture so we did partake in that and so what was happening was the Kuri people at Mula Mula starting to recognise us and understand who we are as an organisation we participated there it was a great day we were then invited and quite recently to the NAIDOC Family Day which was held at Mula Mula on July 5th it was a very successful day the Maroondah Unit set up a large display there for a lot of volunteers in attendance and the the little Kuri children loved it loved being involved and once again our profile I suppose with the Kuri people there rose just another little bit and then subsequently the NAIDOC Ball was held recently 320 guests that was at Croydon we were invited as a staff member I had other staff members say Phil why aren't you going to the NAIDOC Ball and I said because it's such a popular ball able to get four tickets I'd prefer volunteers go rather than paid staff which is me because the volunteers are the ones that have been setting up the displays doing a lot of the hard yards in their own time and so I thought it would be a great opportunity not only for them to be rewarded a little bit having a free night out paid by the region but also help further the relationship with the Kuri people they had an awesome night for the guests I packed them myself it was hours and hours of fun but it was a great night and it was from my perspective great to see from me not knowing anything about where Kuri people are in the Mount Metro area to having us at this ball as guests and being treated exceptionally well and the relationship blossoming and then the other part of that was this trivia night and I hadn't been to a trivia night before ever I've seen them on shows and I've actually been to one we went as a group myself, my partner and a whole team of volunteers from the Maroondah unit and part of that trivia night was fundraising for Muller Muller's new venue as they find one and it was an awesome night and there are other agencies here as well as they were at the ball and our relationship is growing I had two little patty for platypus mascots that the SS give out I took two of them along to be used by Muller Muller's Lucky Door Prizes or whatever and I ended up having a gold coin option of them with like a quiz game set up and it was meant to run probably no more than five minutes and the crowd eliminate and get down to one and that last person gets the patties just kept pulling gold coins out of everywhere and it just kept going and the manager had to end up stopping it and it turned out that the person left was one of our people the SS that won them and so he then in turn donated us straight away back to the two little poor children that have been helping in the activity on stage and that went over exceptionally well and then the following week at the community meeting, the gathering Les Chessels, the manager, got up and spoke very highly of the SS and wanted to make special mention of that gesture by the volunteer in giving those little patty the platypus stale to the two little poor children he said it made their night and it was very well highly regarded and so for me a tick in the box job well done that the maroondah unit have got to that stage where it's all first name basis and they're getting invited to other activities so that was how we did that stage two as I said would be Daribon and I'll just quickly bring up a list as I said it's all on the USB these are the types of activities that we would hope to conduct down the track with Indigenous groups in the Daribon area I've got to remember to keep pressing N here we go bring them all up and these are the activities also that we're conducting at maroondah and as I'll repeat it's baby steps we are probably well behind other agencies but and we are a little agency ourselves staff wise we're quite small volunteers bit over 5000 statewide but staff wise we're barely pushing 180 so we're only a little agency in that regard and these as I said are baby steps in getting to that bigger picture of full on Aboriginal inclusion how's my time is there any questions and I'll just flick through the rest of what you're watching and as I said it's on the USB I've basically covered most of what I said that you'll see come up any questions or comments or feedback where is your maroondah it's in Ringwood East in Patterson Street near the railway on the other side of the railway line where all the shops are and my colleagues no one knew it was there I found it just by research not to say other agencies didn't know it was there it's just that we didn't know it was there and now we do and they know who we are and it's growing and it's just one little part of our bigger picture and we've done a lot of those hard yards already and we're trying to follow suit any other is this helpful or good yeah and I wasn't looking for any accolades or anything about what we're doing it's just part of the role but I was asked to come on today because it's something we're looking as a bigger picture down a track and so by no means is this the answer to everything it's just a little part and hopefully maybe some part of it is helpful to you and as you can see there I've just typed in a list of suggested measures that you can do in doing your engagement with Indigenous people and I want to clarify once again that the title of this presentation it actually is not correct in embracing traditional owners in that I haven't done that haven't embraced traditional owners we've just done a pilot project with an Indigenous group who are in this case the Malamalam Indigenous Gathering Place so I didn't create that title I just want to clarify that and so if that's it I will finish up I'll just go right to the end of the slide show for you like I said it's all on the USB that you'll get and it's just some helpful hints in consulting planning implementing and evaluating a project and I'll finish up on the note that when you are evaluating a project or when you're doing any party project those keywords I found work for me and hopefully will work for you is respect and dignity remember to have respect for the people you're dealing with and treat them with dignity and thank you for your time thanks