Stretch Reconciliation Action Plan 2023–2025

A lot has changed since UniSA released its first Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) in 2014 – changed in our institution, in our nation, in the world. Despite those changes, we have remained firm in our commitment to reconciliation, building on the spirit of our founding legislation and our aim to be a University of Choice for Aboriginal Peoples.

We still have more work to do, of course, and some of the changes over the past few years have made us adjust our approach to parts of that ongoing work.

But UniSA’s commitment to strengthening respect for Aboriginal Peoples, and to creating a diverse educational environment where First Nations knowledges are valued, hasn’t changed.

As we release our third RAP, we can celebrate many successes that have brought us to this point.

Our first RAP helped foster greater respect and awareness of Aboriginal Peoples and cultures in the University community, developing a dialogue, and laying out a path towards reconciliation.

Our second RAP, released in 2018, set us along that path, committing us to clear actions and outcomes. In embracing those commitments, our University community has grown richer.

We have welcomed our Purkarninthi in Residence, a guiding body of Elders who have kinship ties across South Australia. All are well known and widely respected for their broad range of community and cultural knowledge and leadership, and they have been generous in sharing their understandings with the University community.

We have also launched our Aboriginal Research Strategy, designed to position UniSA nationally by articulating a two-way knowledges approach, where Aboriginal knowledges are an integral part of our thinking and embedded across our research activities.

Alongside this strategy, we have introduced new frameworks to support our Aboriginal students achieve their educational aims, as well as strengthening our commitment to increased Aboriginal employment through our Yaitya Warpulai Tappa plan.

And, to help grow understanding and knowledge among non-Aboriginal members of our community, we created Yurirka, our guide to ‘proppa’ engagement with Aboriginal Peoples.

These achievements are significant, and have laid the foundation for what comes next. This RAP commits UniSA to the establishment of our Aboriginal Knowledges Centre, to be housed in our Lewis O’Brien/Yarlupurka Building, which we named in honour of Uncle Lewis in 2021.

This centre will provide the UniSA community with a space to share – a space that will help grow our appreciation and understanding of Aboriginal knowledges and cultures, not as something separate, but as something deeply entwined with everything that happens in this institution, this state, this nation.

The centre will be a physical embodiment of our commitment to two-way knowledge sharing, and this RAP outlines how we will extend that to all areas of the University.

This RAP commits us to a sharing, reciprocal process that recognises the ongoing impact of colonialism on the lives of Aboriginal Peoples, and promotes the cultural changes that are needed to prevent that impact from being repeated into the future – while acknowledging we can never erase it from the past.

We are committing to embedding Aboriginal ethics, protocols, cultures, histories and knowledges in our teaching and research. We are committing to governance approaches that enable the self-determination of Aboriginal Peoples.

And we are committing to greater recognition – celebration – of the fact that UniSA exists on the lands of the Kaurna, Boandik and Barngarla Peoples, for whom place and language are a gateway to knowledge and understanding.

Knowledge and understanding that we want everyone at UniSA to share, embrace and enjoy.

Professor David Lloyd
Vice Chancellor and President

The historic and ongoing impact of colonialism upon the lives of Aboriginal Peoples is significant, in some instances genocidal in its impact. The legacies of colonialism remain for many, dispossession, destruction of our environment, poverty, removal of children and deaths in custody.

The need to de-colonise and re-centre Aboriginal lives is critical, as is the need to recover Aboriginal lands and ways of being to ensure the survival and future well-being of Aboriginal Peoples.

Aboriginal education is essential to healthy Aboriginal futures and the education experience needs to be inclusive of a two-way approach: that is, where Aboriginal knowledge is valued and included. This plan commits to Aboriginal selfdetermination in the education space and to moving forward to actualise and enable, beyond words, to a place where we walk the talk and do the action.

We continue to build upon the work we have begun and now, with Purkarninthi in Residence, Yaitya Warra-itya, we work towards our commitment to build an Aboriginal Knowledges Centre in which we will continue to grow and build positive and respectful relationships that ethically value and include Aboriginal knowledges for both their ancient and future instructions to education.

Professor Irene Watson
Pro Vice Chancellor: Aboriginal Leadership and Strategy

Delivering meaningful actions that build on and extend our precursor RAPs has been a key focus in developing our second Stretch RAP, and it has been a privilege to engage, reflect, and heartily discuss its development with the plan’s sponsor, Professor Irene Watson.

This Stretch RAP is about enabling Aboriginal Peoples and advancing reconciliation in our community, and it’s focused on ensuring that this is the centre, or at the heart, of all that we do. Whilst a small group has led the development of the Stretch RAP 2023-2025, and we thank all the many staff, students and community, including our Purkarninthi in Residence, who have enthusiastically contributed their ideas and feedback through the varied consultation processes, the deliverables outlined in the RAP now rest with all of us to embrace and embed in our work, culture, curriculum, research, engagement, governance, and study. It’s time to act.

Our aspiration to be a University of Choice for Aboriginal Peoples can only be achieved through our individual and shared decisions and actions, and proactively engaging in shared learning to develop and deepen our understanding together. This Stretch RAP provides all of us, no matter what role we are in, the opportunity and imperative to do this, and the chance to celebrate Aboriginal Peoples, knowledges and cultures to create broad and lasting benefits for our community.

Uncle David Rathman AM, PSM
RAP Co-Chair.

Vanessa Matthews
RAP Co-Chair
Students and Research Registrar