Making our words and actions meet
The Australian Education Union (AEU) has a proud history of working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members and communities. The AEU advocates and campaigns for a high-quality public education system that recognises the unique and inherent rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples – as First Nations Peoples of this land – to ensure a culturally responsive and safe education. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation has been embedded into the key decision-making structures of the AEU, through the federal rules of the organisation, for over two decades. Testament to these decision-making structures, Yalukit Yulendj, the AEU’s National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Committee, committed to a survey of Indigenous educators and their experiences of work. The survey explored five inter related categories in which racism manifests. These are:
- Workplace – perceptions and experiences in the current workplace;
- Professional – perceptions and experiences of professional support and structures;
- Personal – perceptions and experiences of personal occurrences and impacts;
- Colleagues – perceptions and experiences of occurrences on colleagues and impacts
- Systems – perceptions and experiences of systems responsiveness.
