Transcript for
Organisational allyship: An Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander view

Narrator (00:02): 

Welcome to the Emerging Minds Podcast. 

Jacquie Lee (00:07): 

Hi, I’m Jacquie. Lee and you’re listening to the Emerging Minds Podcast. We’d like to pay respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast was recorded, the Turrbal and Yuggera people of Meanjin and the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. We also pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their ancestors and elders past, present, and emerging from the many First Nations across Australia. 

(00:32): 

In today’s episode, my colleague Auntie Nancy Jeffrey sits down with Grant Sarra to discuss what organisational allyship looks like for individuals, teams, and broader organisations. Grant is a proud descendant of the Gurang people through his mother and a first generation Italian through his father. A respected cultural leader with a deeply strategic and analytical approach, grant has played a pivotal role in shaping large scale social and economic initiatives across Australia. His ability to navigate complex government and corporate systems has led to tangible policy improvements that better serve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples at both state and federal levels. 

(01:12): 

With a clear focus on outcomes and impact, Grant leverages his extensive networks and expertise to champion forward-thinking solutions. His work consistently centres Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices, positioning them as leaders and innovators in an evolving global economy. 

Nancy Jeffrey (01:29): 

I too would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we are recording today, the Turrbal and Yuggera people of Meanjin, which is Brisbane, and pay my respects to my elders past, present, and all of those Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders who were joining us today. Today, I have the pleasure in interviewing a very good friend of mine, Grant Sarra. So Grant, tell us a little bit about yourself. 

Grant Sarra (01:58): 

I come from Gurang country through Mum, one of four skin groups, Bunda, and then through Pa, Pa was an Italian immigrant who I found out more recently that he wasn’t allowed into Australia until after World War II, and that was all the policies around white Australia policy. I have six brothers and then six sisters and I’m smack bang in the middle. 

Nancy Jeffrey (02:22): 

It’s interesting because you see in the context of what we’re going to talk about is you see both sides, and that’s really important. That’s the reason why I bought you here today. So what does organisational allyship mean to you? 

Grant Sarra (02:37): 

I think you can look at it in any number of ways, really. You can look at from an organisation. It could be any organisation that acknowledges that there’s a problem around injustice or a mistreatment of a people or a community. And it’s that sort of organisation that like yourselves with emerging minds that come together and seek to actually improve and empower a community to do better with the community, not for the community, that sort of thing. Emerging Minds, people like Fred Hollows, another, someone I’ve always admired for who we did because he was authentic. And from what I’ve read of emerging minds, they’re continuing to evolve into a solid, authentic allyship space. 

Nancy Jeffrey (03:22): 

So why is it important for mainstream organisations to partner? And like you were just saying, step back from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs and how can they balance if there is no capacity or community controlled services in the region? 

Grant Sarra (03:38): 

Why should organisations take the time to step back? Before an organisation steps into an allyship, they should be prepared to sit, listen, and learn first. Observe what goes on before saying anything. And they’ve got to, in that sitting, listening, learning, they’ve got to identify key people, decision makers within communities. They’ve got to identify also key people that create humbug and mischief and communities. And they’ve got to work out who calls your shots in terms of cultural decision making, governance, all that stuff. And they’ve got to walk in parallel with them. So the sitting, the listening, the learning is important. If you want to build a house and you want to achieve certain quality standards and you want to minimise the risks and all that in the Western project management context, who are you going to go to? You’re going to go to a reputable, qualified builder. 

(04:32): 

Yeah. If you want to get electrical work done in the house, same. You’re going to go to electrician. You want to do the bricklaying, you’re going to go to a reputable bricklayer. Very simple. If you want to talk about Aboriginal people problems issues in Arrernte, Warrami, Gurang Gurang, Kalkadoon, Walgalu, Pitapita, Muthimuthi, Yamatji, Torres Strait, who are you going to talk to? You’re going to talk to people there on the ground and you sit, you listen and you learn. And when you engage in that space, you don’t come in and make out that you’re the most important person in the conversation because it’s not about I, me or my, it’s about we. And you go and you sit, you listen and you learn. And what I always talk about in a cultural context is that you and I, and we’ve done this before. We know who we are and where we come from. 

(05:27): 

We’ve been through our own traumas. We don’t impose that upon others, but we act with cultural honour and integrity in all that we do and we behave with cultural dignity and humility and all that we display. And that’s important because I talked about astral travelling. Where I came from, where you come from, the impact of colonisation just totally obliterated our law, our culture, our ceremony, our customs, our language. So that was taken away. So as a small boy, and this is the truth, I was five years of age. I could feel spirit around me. I could sense certain things. I felt where a massacre had occurred in my area. I saw through Western religion, I thought this is gamma and I don’t believe in it because it was unjust. I saw people would look down their nose at my mother, who was Aboriginal and cast judgement . 

(06:17): 

I looked at people that looked down their nose at my father and spit on him. And that’s where the fire in my belly comes from there. And you never forget that. 

Nancy Jeffrey (06:32): 

We talked about organisations letting go. How about on an individual level and the team level? What can they do? 

Grant Sarra (06:38): 

I think there’s a combination of things. It’s in order to get into that space of being an ally, you’ve got to establish, build, nurture, sustain, and be prepared to value the differences in relationships. The honour and integrity is about having the humility and the dignity to build trust. And you’ve got to recognise that your Aboriginal communities, different groups that require allyship, they’ve seen thousands of people, organisations come before. So you’ve got to demonstrate that in their presence, what they see of you is what they get. And they need to see a very decent, humble, dignified human being that’s not there to dictate terms. 

(07:18): 

And I see that a lot with different organisations. People have the right heads and the right hearts, the right intent, but the intent takes over the head and the heart. And if the intention is to go out and be seen to make yourself look good, that’s not going to achieve what you’re there for. It’s about trying to create that ultimate human level of empathy and sensitivity so you really immerse yourself in the situation, the people, the circumstance, and just be yourself. 

Nancy Jeffrey (07:48): 

On an individual level, what can you say to a team leader to help your team? 

Grant Sarra (07:54): 

And Lisa wouldn’t like me saying this, but Lisa is, and she’s actually an ally of you and I, and many others. She’s a non-Aboriginal woman, and she just does what she does. And what she did in number of different organisations from where I first met her without saying what those organisations are, she saw certain things needed to be done and she built teams of people. 

(08:21): 

She established her own allyship of like-minded souls and they happened to be black and white and male and female and straight and gay and all that. It was totally relevant. She established built nurtured relationships with a whole range of people, which includes you and I, and we knew what the team was about. And my commitment to Lisa was also a commitment to you and to Richard Weston and others that we work with, never going to let you down. And that to me is important. So the team have all got to be on the same page, but the team have got to recognise that it’s not about I, me or my. We’re not there for ourselves. It’s there for a community or a local issue that needs to be resolved. And we need to embed local capacity to work through problems and issues and come up with local specific solutions and actions informed by people for people. 

Nancy Jeffrey (09:18): 

You just said a little bit about Lisa, but is there any other example you can give me? 

Grant Sarra (09:23): 

Yeah. Look, I’ve crossed paths with many, many non-Aboriginal people. And as I was coming through this morning, I was thinking right back to the days of my days at high school. And my schooling shaped me in terms of the specific… 

(09:37): 

My grade one teacher, I have to share it. She singled my sister and I out in grade one. I had worn a shirt that had a mark on it from the day before, and she proceeded to tell the story to all of us. And I remember as a kid, as you know, we’re sitting there, little five and six year old kids, and we’re thinking and we’re feeling and we’re behaving. And I was there with my sister with this shirt on that had a mark on it. And I had already observed, there was certain kids and they weren’t black or white. It was nothing about it. 

(10:08): 

There was one girl had plats and she was beautiful. I thought she was the best thing since sliced bread. She had nicest clothes, dress, iron, ribbons in her hair. Another kid, he had this sort of outfit. He was [inaudible 00:10:22] . Another girl had red hair and freckles, and here’s me and Tracy were sitting there. And this teacher came in one day and she started talking. She said, “Oh, I want you all to bring in a cake of soap tomorrow.” And I’m thinking, “Oh, this is going to be interesting. We’re going to get out of this classroom and the classroom.” I can still see it to this day. Anyway, and she said, “Oh, what I’m going to do, ” she said, “I’m going to bring in this rusty old bathtub.” And anyway, she said, “What I’ll do, I’ll set this old rusty old bathtub up down under the school where the milk crates come in and all the dark, dingy cobwebs and all that.” 

(10:56): 

And unbeknownst to me, the story wasn’t about us as a class. She come up and stood directly in front of me and my sister and she said, “What we’ll do is we’ll bath these two little black kids because they stink, don’t they?” My sister’s reaction was, she just broke down, cried like an old woman. And I just reached out and I said, “It’s all right. It’s all right.” I put my hand around to protect her and nurture her looking at this. She made us feel ugly. And in the playground, we then got called Coon and Nigger and Boong and Ape and Black C. And by grade three, four, I was fighting all the time. So I talk today, whether it be ally-ships or whether I do with soul and generations or anyone, I know who those people are and where they come from. 

(11:37): 

And I felt the hurt and the pain and the suffering. When I look at Western psychology, Western governance, Western sociology, there’s a black fellow psychology and there’s a black fellow sociology. So when it comes to organisations or individuals that want to be good allies, they need to know and understand how black fellows think and feel and behave with a cultural lens, not a Western textbook lens. And they’ve got to recognise that the impact of trauma that plays out over generations and generations will vary, but they must always walk a straight line and they’ve got to empower, make things better because at the end of the day. You and I know you can see someone individually or collectively that have a problem and you can, and a thousand other people can say, “Listen, sister, this and brother, this is what you got to do.” Until that one person makes a conscious step, conscious decision in their own mind to take that first step to improve their outcome, it’s not going to make a difference. 

(12:41): 

But the reason I tell you that story grade, one is because it still sits with me today and I’m 65. We didn’t understand racism, but we got called all them racist names and mum ran us strong. And I remember from eight years of age through to when I left Bundy, we used to, every Christmas holiday, have to work on the tobacco farms and sugarcane farms, 20 cents an hour. It was every money we made, we put back in the house. And I don’t know about you, but memories of opening a fridge and seeing a bottle of water and a bottle of Vegemite, and that’s all that was there. You understand poverty and oppression. But I remember at 10 years of age, I said to Pa, I had an argument with Pa. I said, “Oh, Pa, how come we had to come to work all the time and do this?” 

(13:27): 

And all the kids at school, they talk about, they go to the beach and they go on holidays and they go shop and they get presents. And I’ll never forget it. Paul looked at me and he’s broken Italian accent and he said, “Listen to me.” He said, “If ever you want to earn anything in the life, you need to learn to work and to work hard.” And I never forgot that. In and around the same time, I was between eight and 10 and feeling spirits around me, I could sense there was something wrong and I think a lot of Black fellows get that sense. Here I am all at 10 years of age and I’d ride shotgun with Mum or Pa. Wherever they went, I was. And this one day mum pulled up outside this house, one of our cousins houses and mum’s there done up to the nines, had the hair done up, dressed, looked a million dollars and I was so proud of. 

(14:14): 

I mean, mom was at the door knocking and I’m looking and watching mom knocking on the door. Next thing, that minute that curtain broke from away, looked out and they saw the car, pulled the curtain back. Mom knocked, knock, knocked for about a good 10 minutes and that curtain come back. So anyway, I said, “Mum, why are you wasting your time for these people? Because there’s someone in that bloody house there and every time you knocked that curtain opened up, they saw the car and they don’t care. And look, you’ve got blood on your leg. We’re going to have to go to the hospital.” And mum just looked at me, she pulled out a tissue and she wiped her leg and I can still see her. And she turned to me, she said, “Grant,” she said, “No matter what you do in life,” she said, “Don’t ever, ever judge other Aboriginal people or other people for that matter.” She said, “Because when you grow up, you’ll understand why people think and feel and behave like they do.” 

(15:04): 

And I’ve never forgotten that. I got to 20, 21 and got called a wog. And I said to mom, I said, “Mom, what are we? Are we coons? Are we ” And she said, Grant, she said, “Your father’s Italian and I’m Aboriginal.” She said, “We both love you and all our children the same.” She said, “The sad reality for you is that you’re going to suffer this all your life.” She said, “This is called racism and it’s not your fault. That’s the fault.” And I’ve worked out that racism is a reflection of other people’s ignorance and insecurity and fear. And it’s not for us to be afraid. When, of course, when I got to 1920, I started working in the TAFE system as a trainee. And the allyship notion, I’d never thought of it as that at the time, but I used to run these adult Aboriginal TAFE programmes. 

(15:56): 

And I’d go and talk to people like back in those days, Aunty Kath Walker, Oodgeroo Nunukul, who lived at Stradbroke Island in a little humpy. He was just the most beautiful human being that you’d ever, ever want to meet. And I was thinking, “There’s mum again.” And just so many people like that, that are Aboriginal people that are just unassuming, wise, and they had this most kind of kinship based leadership and heart. And that’s what I look toward. 

(16:27): 

Where we’ve come from shapes the way we think and feel and behave, where we’re going to. I was trying to take adult tape programmes into the Woodford Prison back in 1980. And I was told, no. By the first superintendent, no, not going to happen. They’re just dogs. And I’m thinking, hang on a minute. No, they’re not. They’re human beings. And if you look close enough, you’ll find that their crimes are not that serious. And there’s an opportunity to rehabilitate. And these programmes I want to talk about can help people do that. The superintendent from that place left and an old fellow by the name of Tom King, I’ll never forget him, a non-Aboriginal fellow. He sat there and he said, “Grant,” he said, “I like this idea. Let’s give it a go.” And we introduced adult tape programmes. To be a good ally, be that individual or collectively as an organisation, you just have to be yourself and you have to have that sense of honour and integrity, the dignity and humility. 

(17:27): 

You can read a person’s energy spirit. You can read and tell a person that’s got a good head and a good heart. You can also pick up where a person is feeling uncomfortable and so forth, but you can see the value, the cultural knowledge and value that you could bring to a situation. And when that wasn’t being listened to and acknowledged, well, I thought, no, that’s not on. And I would stand again and again and again to say, “You need to sit, listen and learn.” If I go into an organisation that talks to talk about allyship and isn’t prepared to walk the walk with the integrity, the honour, the humility, dignity, well, it’s waste of my time. Yeah, you just got to be the best possible version of yourself in this world that we live and this life that we live. And I always encourage people to do that. 

(18:10): 

I have these lots of little things that I remind myself of, one of which is be the best possible version. Speak from the heart about what you know, feel and believe, and you’ll always be fluent. Know that to bring peace to others, you must be at peace with yourself. My mindset is that we all walk a straight line and life, but we’re not perfect. We will deviate slightly in our journey. And the truth is that you must never lose sight of that set of line. Where your values and the principles are, where your parents have brought you and your family brought you. We are all unique and special. None of us are perfect. So therefore I cannot judge. And I would hope that others would see the same, but unfortunately it doesn’t go our way, particularly when it comes to racism. The other thing that I always say and encourage people is to, when shit gets really bad, go and have a look in the mirror. 

(19:04): 

No matter how hard life is, you must always, always love, honour, value, cherish, and respect the person that’s looking back at you. Because if you can’t do that, you can’t be any use to anyone. That’s what allies should do. 

Nancy Jeffrey (19:17): 

So there’s a couple of things that I heard really strongly that was around hearing stories, advocacy around the importance of the social justice component of it. So for a lot of organisations, one of the challenges is knowing when to step in and when not to step in. It prevents and scares organisations where they stop and don’t do anything. What advice would you give organisations who don’t want to do the wrong thing, which then stops you from doing anything? 

Grant Sarra (19:46): 

A couple of ways to look at that. Look, you’ve got to take a step, and that’s part of it. Be curious and take a step is one of the things that you’ve got to do, because they’ve got to be able to see the whole story, a holistic trauma informed, healing focused view, for whatever better description. And recognise that each and every one of us are special, unique and special, not perfect, but we’re also privileged. We’re privileged to see, to hear, to read, to write, to have a job. That’s not a privilege that everybody has. So don’t take those things for granted and be fully immersed and embedded, but don’t let the wool get pulled over your eyes either because sometimes people can see in this humbug. If organisations want to be good allies, just have that owl approach. Don’t be gamma. You’re not going to solve the problems of the world, but don’t get into situations where you get the wool pull over your eyes as well. 

(20:40): 

When it comes to things like closing the gap and all that sort of stuff, when each year they have a productivity commission, two socioeconomic targets move forward, education and birth primarily. What does it say of the other 15? And the other thing is, where is the money going? Now when you look at allyship, individually and organisation, embed that in a truth telling conversation, colonial impact still persists to this day. As I sit here today, you’ve got going on about welcome the country has done it’s beyond its welcome or whatever. You had a voice to parliament. We’re talking about a country that’s 237 years into its existence and it’s just a baby and there’s a lot more that needs to be done. If you look at and understand the impact of colonisation, East Coast, West Coast, complete decimation, premeditated genocide of our people, take away the language, take away the children, introduce caste systems from, in their terms, full blood, quarter caste, quadroon, whatever else they went through. 

(21:48): 

Take away the language, one generation. You talk to Uncle Michael and others within the stolen generation, all stolen generation survivors, deliberate action. Allies that want to work in that space, they need to understand that whole story. And they’ve got to become a survivor and then they’ve got to become a descendant and a descendant of a descendant. And there’s a whole intergenerational trauma that goes over time. And just be you and enjoy life, that’s part of it. You do need to go to work to get paid because unfortunately that’s what we do to survive. But you always say the world’s people are like a garden of beautiful flowers. And in every garden of beautiful flowers, you’re always going to come up against the weed. And when you see that weed and that ugly looking plant and the thing, that’s okay. It’s there for a reason. Just move on, refocus on the beautiful flowers. 

(22:40): 

And that’s why I see the world. And when it comes to acting with cultural honour and integrity and behaving with cultural dignity and humility, I imagine that everything I say and do in my journey in life is being audio recorded and video recorded. If ever the opportunity comes where I get the privilege of being able to press the play button on my life, I’ve got to be happy with what I see and hear. And I haven’t been perfect, no one has, but I’m reasonably content with what I see. For the first hour and a half of my story of life, I’m going to be like that. Don’t be tokenistic. Don’t be gambling. Invest in an empowerment of a people and a place so that when you walk away, things are better. 

Jacquie Lee (23:34): 

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us rating in a review in your favourite podcast app or share the episode with a colleague or friend. And join us next time for part two of this conversation when social worker, Lisa Hillan shares her insights into how non-Aboriginal professionals and organisations can be effective allies to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. 

Narrator (23:58): 

Visit our website today at emergingminds.com.au to access a range of resources to assist your practise. Brought to you by the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health led by Emerging Minds, the centre is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.