BlakTea

Are you a certified Blak business? well you might want to read this!

Imagine living your life as a black fella, being labelled as a black fella, then having to prove you’re a black fulla! Well, here we are. And I wasn’t sure I understood why someone would want to be a black fella that actually wasn’t.

Growing up I wasn’t able to access capital investment against the land my family owned, so I did it pretty tough. My family, like most Aboriginal families where I’m from, lived on the outskirts of town, no car, no power, no running water! And it didn’t get much better from there. Being ‘blak’ in Queensland in the 70’s and 80’s meant regular visits from Social and Health services, checking your head for lice, giving you extra medication and needles, having your poo checked, making sure you were fed, along with a dose of fear mongering. I soon realised our existence was more palpable on the outskirts of town than if you lived in town. So being a black fulla in Australia has its challenges, and wanting to be one if you weren’t didn’t make any sense to me.

Since 1971 the First Nations population of Australia was 115,953, compared to now 983,700. That’s a growth of 4.3% per year versus Australia at 1.4% per year. There’s a few reasons to explain this large growth. Prior to the 80’s, Australia wasn’t good at counting Aboriginal people, then we actually got the opportunity to say we were black instead of having our skin held up next to a colour chart. So now you just tell people you’re a black fulla and it’s happy days. Unless you’re wanting to access grants, funding, capital and services designed for Black Fullas, then it gets interesting. For me, I look like a black fulla so there wasn’t any arguments there, but I had to get an Aboriginal Community Organisation to write a letter to prove my Aboriginality. I had to do this a few times, because I kept losing that letter.

Now if you’re a business owner of a ‘blak’ business, you’ll have to register with Supply Nation to access grants and funding, and to tender for government contracts. The Supply Nation certification is generally accepted across all forms of procurement arrangements in government, corporate and community. When I registered, I was keen to get some more work, but I had to go search for that Aboriginality letter first.

I suppose certification of this nature sets out to ensure that funding and contracts are going to the right people and communities. But we’ve all seen the headlines about cladding, and about blak businesses actually being run by white people who take the profits. And when I hear the stories first hand of the impact on our mob from ventures like Yupla, I have to question the durability of the certification processes we have in place now.

And that leads me to ask, has anyone considered what the certification process was like before? Was it on appearance? Markings on your skin, or the stories you shared? Or was it as simple as answering the question, “who’s your mob?”

Thank you for reading this. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Ej