Aunty Vickey Charles is an Alawa/Mara woman from the Northern Territory who grew up in Adelaide from the age of 18 months, due to government policy at the time.
She has spent her life raising awareness of Aboriginal Australia through her lived experience and work in government and not-for-profit sectors.
Aunty Vickey has led TACSI on a cultural learning journey to become a more culturally competent and culturally inclusive organisation. She has generously shared her life story and experience with TACSI staff and friends throughout this time and brought a First Nations lens to everything we do.
Aunty Vickey has always stressed the importance of non-First Nations peoples embracing the opportunity to learn through doing in individual ways that build awareness. While we have not always gotten it ‘right’, we have seen the TACSI team grow their allyship through individual reflection and attendance at First Nations events, the preparation of our RAP, our cultural inductions, the development of a Cultural Canvas (so that TACSI projects begin grounded in the cultural context) and a Reconciliation Library that we continue to build and grow.
There is so much we are grateful for that Aunty Vickey has quietly and intuitively supported over the years, with so much more to come.
Here, she shares her cultural wisdom on communities, self-determination, the co-existence of black and white systems, and the importance of relationships.
Relationships, relationships, relationships
Listen to Aunty Vickey explain why relationships are truly the most important thing: “Because if you don’t build those relationships with your community, you’re not going to get anywhere.”
Square peg, round hole
Listen to Aunty Vickey illuminate the experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities trying to fit into a colonial society: “Why doesn’t the round hole manoeuvre so it fits around the square peg instead?”
Baking the cake
Listen to Aunty Vickey explain the demand for self-determination: “I want to make the cake and then not have to fight over the crumbs.”
Black system / white system
Listen to Aunty Vickey ponder the co-existence of black and white systems: “I often talk about how do we either bring these two systems together to form one system, or have two systems side-by-side.”
