When an early learning service says, “We are committed to embedding Aboriginal perspectives,” I think there are other questions that needs to follow:
- Who is actually doing the work required to make that happen?
- Who is finding the resources?
- Who is researching local histories and perspectives?
- Who is building relationships with Community?
- Who is explaining protocols?
- Who is checking whether resources are culturally appropriate?
- Who is answering everyone’s questions?
- Who is organising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander events and experiences?
- Who is reminding the team that NAIDOC Week is coming?
- Who is noticing when something doesn’t feel culturally safe?
And perhaps most importantly: Is that responsibility genuinely shared, or is the cultural load quietly sitting on the shoulders of one Aboriginal educator, one Aboriginal family, or a handful of community members?
I Know What It Feels Like To Carry It
This is something I have reflected on a lot over the years. For most of my career working in early childhood education, I was the sole Aboriginal educator within the services where I worked.
I was always passionate about including culture within my program, but particularly in the beginning, I didn’t necessarily know how to do that well.
Being Aboriginal didn’t automatically mean I knew how to embed Aboriginal perspectives into an early childhood curriculum. It didn’t mean I knew the cultural protocols of every community. It didn’t make me an expert on every Aboriginal Nation, language, story, artwork or cultural practice.
I had to learn.
I was incredibly fortunate to be mentored by several amazing educators and managers who supported me to develop my knowledge, confidence and practice. Over time, I became really good at building relationships with community, connecting with Aboriginal organisations and people, listening, learning and bringing that knowledge back into our everyday curriculum.
We developed some amazing intercultural programs. But there was a problem that I didn’t fully recognise at first.
The Knowledge Sat With Me
The relationships sat with me. The confidence sat with me.
I knew who to call. I knew who to ask. I knew where to find information. I had built the relationships. I was the person who could explain why we were doing something, how we should approach it and what we needed to think about.
From the outside, it probably looked like the service was doing Aboriginal perspectives really well. But was it truly embedded?
Because inevitably, when I moved on to another service — and eventually when I left teaching altogether to establish Koori Curriculum — many of those practices stopped.
Not because the educators didn’t care. Not because the service suddenly decided Aboriginal perspectives were no longer important.
But because too much of the knowledge, confidence and relational work had been held by one person.
Me.
If It Leaves When One Person Leaves, Was It Ever Embedded?
That experience changed the way I think about embedding Aboriginal perspectives.
It made me realise that sometimes, in my enthusiasm to make things happen, I had inadvertently made myself essential to the process. I was leading, organising, connecting, explaining and doing.
But if we want practice to be sustainable, there are times when those of us who are confident in this space need to step back enough for other people to step forward.
That doesn’t mean Aboriginal educators should withdraw their cultural knowledge or stop contributing. It means their contribution should sit within a much bigger culture of shared responsibility, shared learning and shared accountability.
Because if Aboriginal perspectives are genuinely embedded within a service, they cannot belong to one person.
They have to belong to the team. It can’t be mine and mine alone. It has to be ours.
The Cultural Load Placed on Aboriginal Educators
When an Aboriginal educator joins a service, there can sometimes be an almost immediate assumption that they will become the service’s cultural expert.
Suddenly they are asked to check resources, answer questions about terminology, organise NAIDOC Week, make community connections, review the Acknowledgement of Country, advise on Aboriginal art experiences and explain cultural protocols.
Sometimes this is framed positively:
- “We thought you might like to lead this.”
- “We wanted to make sure we got an Aboriginal perspective.”
- “Can you check this for us?”
Individually, these requests may seem reasonable. Collectively, they can become a significant cultural load.
There is also an important difference between creating opportunities for Aboriginal educators to lead and expecting Aboriginal educators to lead because they are Aboriginal.
Leadership should be supported, recognised and chosen, not automatically assigned according to someone’s identity. Aboriginal educators should also be able to come to work and be educators.
They shouldn’t have to become the cultural quality-control department for an entire organisation.
Families Can Carry the Cultural Load Too
The same thing can happen with Aboriginal families. A family enrols, and suddenly educators see an opportunity to learn more about Aboriginal culture.
- Where are you from?
- Can you tell us about your culture?
- Do you know anyone who could come and speak to the children?
- Could someone in your family do an Acknowledgement of Country?
- Can you help us with our RAP?
- What should we do for NAIDOC Week?
Again, these questions can come from genuine enthusiasm. But good intentions don’t automatically remove cultural load.
Families shouldn’t have to educate the educators before their child can experience a culturally responsive curriculum. And they certainly shouldn’t feel as though enrolling an Aboriginal child comes with an unofficial position on the service’s reconciliation committee.
We absolutely want families to contribute. But there is a difference between invitation and expectation.
Participation should be welcomed without making Aboriginal families responsible for filling the gaps in an educator’s professional knowledge.
Community Isn’t a Cultural Resource Cupboard
We can place a similar load on Aboriginal community.
Services sometimes talk about “connecting with community” as though the purpose of the relationship is to gain something.
A guest speaker. A cultural experience. Someone to conduct a smoking ceremony. Someone to teach language. Someone to check a resource. Someone to come for NAIDOC Week.
But relationships with Aboriginal community should be reciprocal.
Before asking “What can community do for our service?”, perhaps we also need to ask:
- What kind of relationship are we offering community?
- Do we show up when we don’t need anything?
- Do we attend local events?
- Do we support Aboriginal businesses?
- Do we pay Aboriginal people appropriately for their time, knowledge and cultural expertise?
- Do we maintain relationships throughout the year?
- Do we listen when community tells us something that challenges our existing practice?
Reciprocity changes community engagement from a transaction into a relationship.
Shared Responsibility Doesn’t Mean Everyone Becomes a Cultural Expert
This is where I think an important distinction needs to be made. Sharing the cultural load doesn’t mean every non-Aboriginal educator needs to become an expert in Aboriginal culture.
They can’t.
Nor should educators position themselves as authorities on cultural knowledge that isn’t theirs. Shared responsibility means everyone takes responsibility for their own professional learning and practice.
An educator can learn how to respectfully build relationships with Aboriginal families. They can research whose Country their service is located on. They can develop their understanding of local histories. They can learn appropriate terminology. They can critically evaluate resources. They can recognise stereotypes and tokenism. They can build their confidence having conversations about race and racism. They can develop relationships with community rather than waiting for the Aboriginal educator to make the introduction.
They can understand why embedding Aboriginal perspectives is part of their role as an educator — not an optional interest area for the person on the team who happens to be Aboriginal.
Cultural Safety has to Belong to Everyone
This becomes particularly important when we talk about cultural safety. A culturally safe service cannot depend upon which educator happens to be working that day.
An Aboriginal family shouldn’t feel culturally safe when speaking with one particular educator but uncertain about approaching everybody else.
Cultural safety needs to be reflected across the service — in relationships, communication, enrolment processes, curriculum decisions, environments, policies, leadership and everyday interactions.
And importantly, cultural safety isn’t something a service simply gets to declare about itself. It needs to be experienced.
For Aboriginal children and families, that experience is created through hundreds of seemingly small interactions.
- How are they greeted?
- Are their identities understood without being stereotyped?
- Do educators know their family and community?
- Can parents raise concerns without becoming responsible for educating the service?
- Are Aboriginal perspectives visible throughout the curriculum without their child being singled out?
- Are racist comments recognised and addressed?
- Do educators know how to respond when they get something wrong?
- Does the family feel listened to?
- Do they feel respected?
- Do they feel that their child belongs?
That cannot be the responsibility of one Aboriginal educator.
Every educator contributes to whether that family experiences the service as culturally safe.
So, Who is Carrying the Load?
This is a worthwhile question for teams to sit with. Think about everything your service currently does to embed Aboriginal perspectives. Then think about the people behind that work.
- If your Aboriginal educator left tomorrow, what would stop?
- If your most passionate educator left tomorrow, what would disappear?
- If your Aboriginal families stopped providing cultural knowledge, what would your educators still know?
- If your main community contact became unavailable, would the relationship with community continue through other people?
If the answers make you uncomfortable, that’s useful information. Because embedding isn’t demonstrated by how much Aboriginal content exists within your service.
It is demonstrated, in part, by whether the knowledge, relationships, responsibility and commitment are strong enough to exist beyond one person.
From Individual Passion to Collective Practice
Looking back, I am incredibly proud of the programs I developed as an educator. But one of the biggest lessons I took from those experiences was that being the person who could do everything wasn’t necessarily the goal.
The goal was to build the capacity of the people around me. Sometimes leadership means stepping forward. Sometimes leadership means bringing somebody with you.
And sometimes leadership means stepping slightly to the side and saying: “You have a go. I’ll support you.”
Because sustainable cultural inclusion isn’t created by finding one passionate Aboriginal educator and allowing them to carry everyone else.
It is created when leadership invests in professional learning, educators develop their own confidence, Aboriginal staff are supported rather than burdened, families are invited rather than relied upon, community relationships are reciprocal, and accountability belongs to the whole team.
Embedding Aboriginal perspectives should never depend upon one person’s identity, passion or unpaid cultural labour. The knowledge may come from many places. The cultural authority will sit with Aboriginal people and communities.
But the responsibility for creating culturally responsive, culturally safe early learning environments?
That belongs to all of us.
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