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Open Right

Ron Murray: Indigenous Cultural Awareness

Session Info:

Ron’s Indigenous Awareness workshops offer an opportunity to gain insight into Australia’s Indigenous culture, history and contemporary issues through personal narrative. His aim is to raise awareness about Indigenous culture and facilitate understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Ron’s cultural awareness sessions aim to challenge participants’ perceptions of Indigenous Australians and to create a context of relationships between Indigenous people and ‘mainstream’ Australia.   The sessions also aim to give participants an understanding of Indigenous cultural practices and cultural differences with a view to providing individuals with an awareness of respectful communication strategies when meeting and working with Indigenous people in their workplace and everyday life.

Ron opens the session by playing the didgeridoo and paying respects to the traditional owners.  This acknowledgement contributes to awareness-raising and is recognition of the role of locality (or country) to Indigenous people.

Ron Murray’s approach to the training session challenges his participants. He uses ‘his’ cultural tools of oral information, history and storytelling to convey the information. Ron draws upon his unique life experience; his storytelling technique encourages the group to look within their own value system and identify areas where their communication is challenged. By presenting an organic oral approach, Ron’s sessions encourage deep listening and discussion.

Topics:

  • Positive stories: the contributions of Aboriginal people to the Australian way of life
  • Linking past to present: how European settlement impacts on today’s Indigenous communities; and also with a focus on Victorian local history and local issues
  • The importance of culture and country to Aboriginal people: with a discussion of Ron’s Artifact collection, sacred places and objects (Victorian cultural focus)
  • Indigenous stories: bringing alive connections to/protection of country, family and totems. The debate between written and oral histories
  • Myths and stereotypes about Indigenous people – key issues and key barriers faced
  • Understanding Indigenous family structures, appropriate terminology, elders, and tribal boundaries: and how this impacts upon working with Indigenous people
  • Indigenous cultural practices and knowledge, sensitivities and protocols, and how they affect communication and workplace relations
  • Connecting with, engagement and accessing Indigenous communities