On the gift of time and creating ecosystems of giving

I was born in Moree and moved to Tamworth when I was five, and while moving from home we stayed within the Gomeroi nation. We didn’t grow up with money so giving in a monetary sense wasn’t a thing for us. I remember Mum and dad working extremely hard but often there were times when they went without food so us kids could eat. 

However, we were surrounded by great giving in terms of the value of time. We were part of a neighbourhood where all the kids played together, we all shared food and there was this real sense of community; if anyone was struggling, we knew that there would always be someone around who was willing to help. Quite often Indigenous people under-record volunteering because we just see it as helping out family and community. It’s important to us and it’s just what we do.

Throughout my life, giving hasn’t just been about funding and dollars but giving through love and attention and the gift of time. I've always loved the generosity of giving and how you can show it in so many ways. 

Australia is home, and it's been home to my family for over 60,000 years. But we often forget that we also need to love and care for anyone who's living on our country and to make sure that they take care of it and love it as much as we do.

The thing that drives my giving the most, especially from a philanthropic point of view, is challenging traditional non-Indigenous assumptions and having positive interactions. I want to make every conversation I have count. I want every interaction to be a valuable change for that person, because not everyone has the privilege to meet with an Indigenous person every day, and you never know what position the person I’m talking to will end up in one day. 

I also like drawing attention to issues that are often overlooked. That drives a lot of my giving in terms of my time, and I really love focusing on my community here. Canberra has been my home for the last 18 years, and so I sit on the Hands Across Canberra board as a way of giving back to my community that has given me a lot over the last 18 years.

My favourite charity is the Fred Hollows Foundation. My sister was one of the last patients Fred operated on before he passed; she was about four years old when she was bitten by a dog, and he saved her eye. I love giving to that organisation because it’s directly meaningful to me and my family. 

I also give a lot of time to equity-based initiatives. Through the Atlantic Fellows for Social Equity, which I undertook with the University of Melbourne back in 2017, I now sit on the Global Fellows Advisory Board. 

I am also part of an initiative called Walking the Talk for Dementia, which is about connecting researchers and policy makers with people who are living with dementia. Billions of dollars in grant funding goes to medical research every year, but often the researchers don't meet patients who are living with the disease they're researching. It's a really important initiative for me because First Nations Australians in remote Australia have one of the highest rates of dementia prevalence in the world. We are three to five times more likely to acquire dementia in our lifetime because of social and economic factors, like trauma, that are associated with the burden of that disease. It’s one of those statistics that not a lot of people know about.

My work with the Global Fellows Advisory Board, Hands Across Canberra and Walking the Talk for Dementia is all unpaid. And the benefit of being part of Canberra's Charitable Community Foundation is that you see people who have made wealth in Canberra, give back to their community. 

In the ACT there’s around 7,000 Indigenous peoples, but only 10% of those identify as being traditionally linked to this region. That means 90% of Indigenous people living within the ACT come from other areas across Australia. It’s such a wonderful thing to help navigate these complex relationships because it's the people who live in and love this community that matter.

I'd love to see the rise of more First Nations people working in philanthropy so they can experience the joy of giving from a multifaceted point of view; from a funder point of view, a personal point of view, but also through the time and generosity that we often give anyway, unpaid.

Philanthropy was a weird world to come into, and I really started to understand its convening power in the build up to the referendum. Before that, I had no idea what it was and made the assumption that it was “rich white man money!” But now what drives me, especially within a funding capability, is bringing an innovative lens to philanthropy and looking at it critically and deeply. 

For example, when we’re talking about the goal to double giving in Australia by 2030, I don't want to see a double in giving to Indigenous benefit; it needs to be more than that. It needs to be five or 10 times that rate because we need to account for historical underspending and injustices. And it's not about calling people out, or guilt tripping people into doing it. It's a reflective exercise to question, what can we do better, and how can we do it together with Indigenous peoples and communities? 

In 2019, giving to Indigenous-led organisations only accounted for 0.5% of total giving, and I think that in the latest analysis that number is close to 1.5%.This means it’s not even a population priority, and doubling that amount is not going to add up to much. A lot of the money is still going to non-Indigenous organisations to work with Indigenous peoples, but I want to see us write a different script; one that really considers how Indigenous people are being locked out of wealth within this country. 

Neither mum nor dad were allowed to finish school. My dad didn’t even finish primary school because he was born in 1951 and the referendum to change the citizenship rules didn’t come in until 1967, and equal wages didn't come in until much later than that. We didn’t benefit from the post-World War II efforts because we weren't recognised as citizens, so we didn't get land or housing. We weren’t part of that property boom and we've never been able to build the wealth at the same rate because we've always been starting from a position that’s behind everyone else.

That because of the generosity of Indigenous people in this country, we’re extremely good at creating not-for-profits, but we’re not that great at creating wealth. The other day I was saying to someone that I want to see our first Indigenous oligarch or Indigenous tech bro/sis come to the forefront, because we have brilliant innovations and ideas. 

I would love to see a wealth-building model that’s geared towards Indigenous organisations. We need to encourage wealth building in a different way – whether it’s through business and enterprise or creating new economies – because when it's for the benefit of the community, they will automatically reinvest it at a faster rate back into their community.

But I think my biggest lesson is how important it is to see yourself as part of an ecosystem, because none of us can do it alone. Even at the Paul Ramsay Foundation, although we’re a large funder within Australia, we wanted to take a systems approach because we know that relatively we’re just a tiny drop in the ocean. And I’ve noticed this same shift from other funders, both large and small, who are finding ways for us to band together, learn together and to give better for Indigenous people. I’ve witnessed the power of collaboration within philanthropy to drive change.

I want philanthropy to focus not just on doubling giving, but increasing giving to Indigenous-led organisations. I’d also love to influence the broader sector, the whole ecosystem from governments and philanthropy to individual leadership and the banking industry. If we truly want to advance Indigenous economic wealth, development and empowerment we will need a multifaceted approach.