Australian employers must do more to lift the heavy ‘cultural load’ placed on Indigenous employees

Far too often, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people face an unacknowledged burden in the workplace – a “cultural load”— that sees them being asked to educate their colleagues or take on a company’s cultural work.

It happens all year round, but the cultural load is often heightened around January 26 and in weeks like NAIDOC Week, where Indigenous people are lumped with educating others when a workplace does not have appropriate cultural training in place.

Yawuru/Bunuba woman Cara Peek, a lawyer, and co-founder of the Cultural Intelligence Project, said Indigenous employees are regularly asked to take on a company’s cultural work, like giving Acknowledgements of Country at meetings.

“Just because I’m the only Aboriginal board member doesn’t mean I am the only one who can give an Acknowledgement of Country,” Peek says.

“I’m not saying I don’t want to be in the room, but it needs to be more than that.”

Peek’s business, which she co-founded with her sister Adele Peek, has this week launched a scalable e-learning platform called Cultural iQ, providing culturally appropriate training for businesses across the country, helping employers to hit the mark when it comes undertaking cultural work in their workplace.

“The burden of the cultural load is partly because non-Indigenous people want to be better,” Peek says.

“They often want to learn, and they want to know, and they want to be inclusive of Indigenous people in the workplace. But they don’t always know how to educate themselves – so they ask the one Indigenous person in the room.”

Peek says the weight of this cultural load can have very real mental health impacts on Indigenous employees and it’s incumbent on employers to seek out a solution.

“It is a real thing and it genuinely impacts your mental health, which is such a big issue,” she explains.

“You get asked heaps of questions and if you don’t know the answer, because it may not be something relevant to your community or your lived experience or your studies. There is a level of expectation that you should know the answer and if you don’t, that causes stress.”

The latest Australian Indigenous Employment Index shows Indigenous people fill only 0.7% of senior management positions across the country. Meanwhile, employment parity is still a long way off, with rampant racism in the workplace contributing to poor retention rates for Indigenous people.

Peek says we can never underestimate the power senior leaders play in creating culturally safe environments.

“Only First peoples can truly understand First peoples’ lived experience, and sometimes, [it’s] the battle it takes to even get to work that day and the need to walk into a culturally safe environment,” Peek says.

“The more people we have at the senior levels, the more we will see systems and structures slowly ebb and flow and change.”

Cara Peek. Image: Supplied.

Peek notes that Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander women are the most marginalised and most at risk people in Australia, so there is a real need to share the cultural load.

“There is strong and then there is Indigenous woman strong. We need to be heard. And we welcome allyship, and I say often say accomplices, because they are the people who put skin in the game to help educate,” she says.

“The burden is hard, and employers need to do the work. We can’t carry the load ourselves.”

This article was first published by Women’s Agenda.