How you can show support to Indigenous-owned businesses

It doesn’t take a Certificate in Business Analytics to know that without consistent support, businesses die.

Yet owning and running a successful business offers many the opportunity for independence and security. Australia’s independent businesses create billions of dollars in trade and economic prosperity for our nation, but there are a huge number of people being overlooked in their business efforts. 

Australia’s First Nations people have proliferated in Australia’s economic growth, and Aboriginal-owned businesses have been found to account for around $16 billion in revenue and are responsible for employing more than 110,000 people per year. 

Yet somehow these businesses are still suffering from underexposure and a lack of support from the public. If these businesses were to fail, then it would be a significant blow to the economic landscape for Australia – so the question becomes what can we do to better support these businesses and ensure they don’t fall into obscurity?

Know your businesses

The very first step to supporting Indigenous-owned businesses sounds simple but a lot of people don’t get even this far. To support Aboriginal and First Nations-owned businesses you, of course, must know what those businesses are!

It’s not hard to find businesses owned by Australia’s First Nations people, all it takes is a simple online search and boom! You’ll find hundreds of businesses owned by our nation’s Indigenous population. These businesses range from clothing brands and jewellery to art and decor. The world of business is diverse, with people offering a wide number of services. The sphere of businesses owned and operated by Aboriginal Australians are no less so and contribute a massive amount of income and revenue to our country’s economy.

Once you know what businesses are owned and operated by Aboriginal people, it’s simply a matter of buying from those businesses as much as possible, as well as leaving favourable reviews, and talking to your social circle about them.

Join forces

Among the myriad of reasons that Indigenous businesses can struggle to get off the ground is a biased perspective that pervades our society. A lack of trust from the consumer of the business owner, fuelled by racial prejudice, can often be a point of difficulty for Aboriginal businesses in their infancy. However, there is a simple way that other business owners can help: collaboration.

Brands working together provides both businesses with a chance to grow their clientele. When two businesses co-brand together, the result is that the customer base from one starts to interact with the other as well, and since the brands have partnered up, they benefit from their separate brand voices and images mingling. The practice of co-branding a business has proven successful many times throughout the world’s economic history, and established businesses with a “favourable” reputation seen to be working alongside and actively supporting an aboriginal-owned business is a massive boon to both companies.

Decolonisation

Australia’s drought history is overtly colonialist. Australia was a free nation until the Europeans showed up on the shores of the country, and began their brutal regime of penal colonialism, land-grabbing, and genocide. The resulting society has, for many years, benefitted off the back of this incredibly turbulent history, and even now the echoes of the atrocities committed against the Aboriginal people can be seen today.

This is where decolonisation comes into the picture. “Decolonisation” is the process of ensuring that your business is not benefitting (or at least minimising the benefits gained) from Australia’s colonialist history.

It means instead of just buying stock from white-owned businesses, diversifying the businesses that you purchase your stock from. It means looking at your board of directors or business partners and making sure that the Aboriginal people are adequately represented there.

It means taking accountability for how you may, consciously or unconsciously, be benefitting from the suffering of generations of people, and then working to change it.

This benefits many people, as business owners who decolonise add their voice to the expansive choir of aboriginal people in this nation begging for equality. However, establishing favourable business arrangements with Aboriginal-owned businesses allows people to draw from a wider range of talent and unique cultural perspectives that can do a lot to improve a business.

Ensure authenticity

The importance of authenticity in pursuing the support of Indigenous businesses cannot be understated. Australian businesses have a habit of using Aboriginal art, designs, and aesthetics, as well as cultural practices without any actual support from Aboriginal businesses, artists, or designers. Not only is it unethical to use the labour of artists without sufficient credit or recompense, but to do so to an already marginalised community is representative of an unscrupulous business owner.

To make sure that your business is doing its part to uplift the First Nations businesses around it, it is important to make sure that the designs you’re using in your branding, or the artwork or any products you’re selling that draw influences from Aboriginal and Torres-Strait Islander cultures, are authentic in both their creation and their production.

Alongside this, it is imperative to credit the creators responsible for making the Aboriginal wares you see, ensuring that your brand is doing its part for the visibility and recognition of these artists and creators. This is another way that people can support Aboriginal business owners, through transparency and proper crediting.

There’s still progress to be made

While it is true that there are thousands of Aboriginal businesses doing well, the reality is that social inequality and negative racial bias remains an ongoing issue.

If there is ever to be any progress to a peaceful, equitable, and harmonious relationship with the original custodians of our country, then supporting their contributions to its economy and our lives needs to become a priority, not just for Australian consumers, but for other Australian businesses as well. When you support an indigenous-owned business, you support the vision of a better and brighter future for everyone.