The Management Committee of Tamarama SLSC has developed a strategy for the clubs’ Indigenous engagement. We have shared this strategy with local Indigenous leaders and we now are sharing this strategy with our members for feedback.  Following feedback from members, the strategy was be approved at the 2019 Annual General Meeting by our members.

We would encourage members to embrace and engage with the actions in this strategy.

Tamarama SLSC Reconciliation Strategy

Tamarama SLSC supports the Uluru Statement From The Heart and will work to educate our community to bring about the necessary constitutional reform and the Makaratta Commission called for in the Statement.

Tamarama SLSC has revived the successful Holly Days program to include 10 indigenous kids in the clubs Nipper program.  Through the Nippers program we aim to have a growing participation of indigenous people in our club.

Within five years would aim to have the following indigenous participation:

• 20 children in the nippers program
• 2 qualified SRC on patrols
• 1 bronze medallion holders on patrol
• 1 adult nipper age managers
• 1 member of the management committee
• An Indigenous training unit of study for each Nippers age group incorporating language, culture and knowledge with an emphasis on the sea and beach. Potential to pilot this program to be incorporated into SLSA for all nippers training.

Call for Volunteers

We seek club members to volunteer for the following roles:

• Assisting Jo Miller with the work of arranging, picking up and returning indigenous kids throughout the 2018/2019 season.
• Leading and working on the development of the Indigenous Training Unit for Nippers with local indigenous community.  We would welcome a range of people to take part in this work, particularly people with an interest in Indigenous issues and who have a teaching or training background.

Please contact Tim Murray on [email protected] to provide feedback on the Tamarama SLSC reconciliation strategy and to volunteer to take part in the process.

Tamarama Indigenous Learning Strategy 

Tamarama SLSC supports the Uluru Statement from the Heart and with the advice and support of local Indigenous communities, we aim to foster the same culture of mutual respect and acknowledgement through our Learning Strategy that is called for in the Statement. 

The Tamarama Indigenous Learning Strategy accepts our role as learners in this engagement. It acknowledges the Indigenous people whose land we gather and patrol on and it acknowledges the richness to be gained from thousands of years of knowledge about our coastline. In so accepting this, we take one definitive step toward being a better community and better lifesavers.  

We are seeking to increase enrollments to at least 20 Indigenous children participating in Nippers and we aim to have Indigenous SRC and bronze medallion holders on patrol.  We would welcome Indigenous members becoming Nipper age managers or taking on other management roles in the club.

We will work with our local Indigenous community to develop Indigenous learning units of study for Nippers incorporating local language, culture and knowledge with an emphasis on the sea and beach.  Our club will pilot the program and then we will look to working with SLS NSW and SLSA to have a similar program incorporated into other clubs in the local area, the state and nationally over time.

 Background 

In May 2017 a Constitutional Referendum Council of Indigenous leaders came together over three days and drafted the “Uluru Statement from the Heart”. To bring action to that statement, the Council also established a truth and justice commission, the Makaratta Commission. “Makaratta” is a Yolgnu word for treaty.

 Uluru Statement from the Heart:

 We, gathered at the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, coming from all points of the southern sky, make this statement from the heart: 

Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs. This our ancestors did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation, according to the common law from ‘time immemorial’, and according to science more than 60,000 years ago. 

This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature’, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown. 

How could it be otherwise? That peoples possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred link disappears from world history in merely the last two hundred years? 

With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood. 

Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future. 

These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness. 

We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country. 

We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution. 

Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination. 

We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history. 

In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.