Building Relationships, Respect and Opportunities

"At the heart of reconciliation is the relationship between the broader Australian community and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.” - Reconciliation Australia

Your Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) is built around three pillars: relationships, respect and opportunities. The fourth and fifth pillars, governance and opportunities, underpin these and tie them together to ensure accountability.

So how does this look when it comes to implementing your RAP?
Relationships, respect and opportunities are interdependent. We need to build cultural competence in order to build respect, and from there, forge relationships. That respect and positive relationship is key to creating real and tangible opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to flourish within your company. As you implement your RAP, this may look like:

• Respect: Bringing a team on a journey of cultural competence that involves learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, examining how we are shaped by our own cultures, and becoming aware of our own biases and assumptions. This is not always a comfortable journey for the individual – but it is a worthwhile one, where we all learn about each other, and start to form a new kind of relationship based on mutual respect and truth telling.
  
  
• Relationships: Embracing cultural protocols like Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country as part of everyday life, and a shared, uniquely Australian culture and identity. Forging partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and organisations, both internally and externally. Delivering programs and policies in partnership.
  
  
• Opportunities: Providing a flexible, culturally safe workplace where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees can meet their cultural obligations and embrace opportunities for career development. Increasing the diversity of your supply chain, to both support Aboriginal businesses and benefit from their contribution to your company.

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If you would like to know more about RAP Implementation, please send us a message via the form on this page. We’ll send you some free practical resources to help you build up your RAP implementation toolkit.

• Resource 1: How to start conversations about cultural competency in your business
• Resource 2: Guide to developing a business case for increasing understanding, value and recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, histories, knowledge and rights within our organisation.
• Resource 3: RAP Implementation Q and A with IPS

Get your FREE RAP Implementation toolkit:

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IPS First Nations advisory

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