Yarning With: Rachael McPhail
YARNING WITH: RACHAEL McPHAIL
“It’s really important that we are creating… With, for and by mob”
At Blacklock Media, we relish producing corporate videos because it gives us the opportunity to collaborate with a wide range of people who are not just excellent at their jobs, but are incredible humans, to boot. Whether innovating in their field, helping their community, or creating art that inspires, we get so much pleasure meeting our clients that we thought you would too… So what else are a story-telling bunch to do but shine a spotlight on some of them here in our new Yarning With series? Our first interview is with Gomeroi woman Rachael McPhail, whom we worked with on video production for the Disability Trust RAP - but who has also made a huge impact with her campaign to have Australia Post recognise traditional Place Names in addresses.
BY ALICIA ROSE
Yaama Rachael! We had the pleasure of working with you on the Disability Trust RAP project, but for those who don’t know you, or the work you do, can you please share a bit more about that- and yourself?
Yaama! Thanks for inviting me to be part of Yarning With!
My name is Rach, and I’m a Gomeroi woman, part of the Griffen mob from around Breeza and Gunnedah. I grew up out on Dharawal Country, and moved out to Coolamon on Wiradjuri Country about four and a half years ago. I have 2 kelpies, chooks, and heaps of nieces and nephs. When I originally met Brendan Blacklock I was working for the Disability Trust, but have recently started a job working as a social worker in the homelessness sector.
Outside of my paid work, I also founded the Place Names in Addresses campaign, and petitioned Australia Post to officially change their addressing guidelines to include First Nations place names. When people started jumping on board and supporting this campaign, I got inundated with requests to help people find the true place name of where they live or wanted to send mail. Currently the most accurate nationwide resource we have is the AIATSIS map, however it’s not very accurate and wasn’t created in collaboration with the First Nations community. So my campaign then evolved to calling for the creation of a database of First Nations place names that is community-owned and has been created in collaboration with Elders through comprehensive, inclusive and trauma-informed consultation. It’s also really important that the ICIP, or Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property, that goes into creating this database is protected, and that we are creating this resource with, for and by mob.
Incredible. So you have already successfully campaigned Australia Post to recognise traditional place names in addresses, which is a huge achievement just on its own. Dare I ask… Is anything next?
Thank you! I’ve been working with a small project team to get the First Nations place names database project up and running, made up of First Nations women Kirli Saunders and Tamina Pitt, and amazing ally Kaz McGrath. There’s a huge amount of work that our team has put in to create an entity to carry out this project and work out the ethics and framework of such a huge task - and we still have so much to do before we can go public and actually start the collaboration and consultation with Elders and community leaders. So this is going to be an ongoing commitment for me, for quite a few years probably.
And in regards to your work when we collaborated on the RAP videos; what is it that the Disability Trust does, and what was your role/involvement on this project?
The Disability Trust is a not-for-profit disability organisation, who I worked for in various roles for just over 10 years. The role I was working in before I left was Project Manager for their Reconciliation Action Plan.
The Disability Trust RAP artist, LaToya Kennedy (Hall)
Some of our readers may not be aware of what a RAP is, or its importance… Would you be able to shed some light on that?
A RAP, or a Reconciliation Action Plan, is basically a document that has a list of commitments and actions that an organisation will take towards reconciliation. There are 4 levels of RAP’s, depending on where the organisation is in it’s reconciliation journey, and it’s broken into sections: Respect, Relationships, Opportunities and Governance.
For me, a RAP is an important framework for a non-Indigenous organisation to have, as it’s their roadmap to how they’re going to create actual change for First Nations peoples, both employees and the wider community. For example, the Relationships section breaks down into achievable actions as to how that business will start to reach out to First Nations community groups and organisations, to have yarns and learn from mob, find out what their experience has been and what they need.
Why do you think it was important to hire an Aboriginal owned/run production company for this project?
So, for context for your readers, I’ll explain that the Disability Trust engaged Blacklock Media to film and create two videos for us; one was a RAP explainer video and the other was a video of our RAP artist, LaToya Hall, describing the story of her artwork, her journey as an artist with a disability, and what being part of the Disability Trust means to her. We also requested that both videos included accessibility elements including being easy to understand, subtitles, and verbal image descriptions.
It was important to hire a First Nations owned and run production company for a couple of reasons. Firstly, a commitment in the RAP is to increase economic opportunities for First Nations peoples, including procurement of goods and services. And probably most importantly, we wanted to create a culturally safe environment for mob who were being filmed.
And what was it that made Blacklock Media stand out in particular?
When I was researching different companies, I watched a few of the videos on the Blacklock Media website, and I really loved the way that the person and their story were so respected. I really wanted to find someone who would help LaToya shine whilst sharing her personal stories, and I just had a gut feeling that Brendan would be able to do this.
Okay, I’m curious… How were we to work with?
Brendan and his crew were extremely professional and had some pretty impressive gear and equipment.
We had online meetings leading up to the filming day to prepare scripts and settings - but despite this, those of us who had to speak were still really nervous. Brendan and his crew were so patient, and created rapport really easily with our team by using humour to make light of the situation and any awkwardness we were feeling. At one point, Brendan cleared the room so it was mob only, to allow us the space to have a safe yarn about who our mobs were, where we grew up, etc, and then resumed filming when we were feeling more confident. In the end, they nailed the filming, and got plenty of footage to creat two incredible videos for us.
The post-filming process was really great also, and the team were really understanding about our need for subtitles and audio descriptions of the imagery, which they added really seamlessly into the final videos.
“It was important to hire a First Nations owned and run production company for a couple of reasons... Increase economic opportunities for First Nations peoples, including procurement of goods and services. And probably most importantly, we wanted to create a culturally safe environment for mob who were being filmed. ”
It was important to embody the inclusivity message of the Disability Trust in this video by using audio descriptors for the visually impaired… Is that something you’d like to see more of generally to promote accessibility to all?
Absolutely! We should be creating a society where everything is accessible, so that everyone can enjoy and be part of their community. The social model of disability says that people with a disability are prevented from participating not because of their disability, but because of how we build and create things in society. If accessibility became the norm, then people with a disability would always be able to be involved.
This is the reason why we decided to create the RAP explainer video, to help people with a learning disability to understand what the RAP is - and we also added subtitles for people with hearing impairments, and audio image descriptors so people with vision impairments could understand what was happening on screen. I really hope that the creative industry continues to develop ways of being more inclusive, and a great example of this is how live music concerts have started including AUSLAN interpreters up on stage - even at Rihanna’s Super Bowl half time show!!
Are there any other things you think should already be implemented in society on a wider scale?
I would love to see the building code in Australia upgraded so that all new house builds must be disability accessible, with doorways and hallways wide enough for electric wheelchairs and mobility scooters to fit through, etc. This would mean that people with mobility issues in the future would be able to find accessible housing more easily, and would always be able to go and visit their friends homes too!
Any parting words? Any projects you want to promote? Cut loose! ;)
Thanks for inviting me to be a part of your blog, and giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts. If your readers would like to follow my campaign and help us get the FNPN Project up and running, we’d be really grateful for the support!!
Thanks so much for your time and all the incredible work you do.
You can follow Rach on Instagram here: @place_names_in_addresses
Photo Credit: Sarah-Jane Edis