Jawun: 2017 Learnings and Insights

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improve Tribal Warrior’s programs. Applying a 7-S
framework (see Section 2.1), all aspects of capacity
building were supported by secondees, who:
• helped Tribal Warrior identify a strategy for
becoming a leading cultural tourism provider in
Sydney, including an enterprise and marketing
plan based mainly on harbour cruise products,
and helped articulate a Redfern Community Plan
• applied experience in organisational management
consultancy to review Tribal Warrior’s structure
from a strategic efficiency perspective, looking
particularly at governance and partnerships
• reinforced work health and safety, IT, information
management and reporting systems, and through
a successful funding proposal, secured premises
for Tribal Warrior’s mentoring
• backed Tribal Warrior at a personal or
professional level—buying tickets for their families
on Tribal Warrior cruises, fundraising when the
flagship Mari Nawi was destroyed by fire, staying
in touch post-secondments—in ways that added
to a shared culture built on vision, achievements
and connections
• applied sense-checking and truth-testing to
Tribal Warrior’s entrepreneurial style, helping new
enterprises or initiatives emerge in an informed
journey of discovery
• carried out a comprehensive staffing review,
which defined training needs and identified a gap
in marketing, sales and customer service skills for
new enterprises
• drew on human resources and training
expertise to transfer skills to employees,
including marketing, sales, customer service,
time management, professionalism, project
management and web development.
Today, around 3,000 people have gained maritime
training through Tribal Warrior. Young Indigenous
men who were laughed at on the harbour when they
started, but were told by Shane to ‘stick it out, and
show them how hard you work’, are now captaining
commercial vessels and managing marinas.
One of these former trainees, Allan de Plater, is now
captaining the flagship Tribal Warrior and training
other young people in maritime certificates:
I am that person whose life turned around
because of Tribal Warrior. Before I did the training
I had a cleaning certificate—you don’t even need
a cleaning certificate! The training meant I could
take care of my family, I could make choices, my
family could make choices, and I could be part of
a community.
Tribal Warrior is well known for the success of Clean
Slate Without Prejudice. At dawn three times a week,
around 80 young people and police officers spar
before having breakfast together. Young participants
attend mentoring sessions and Indigenous culture
and language classes. Data tracked since the
program began showed a 73% drop in juvenile
robberies and a 57% drop in assaults on police
which Shane and Luke put down to the simple power
of routine and discipline for young people who have
known little of either.
The program led to a related initiative, Never Going
Back, for Indigenous prisoners near the end of
their sentence at Long Bay Correctional Complex.
Prisoners are provided with training for employment
and housing to ensure a strong support network
upon their release. This is vital to prevent re-
imprisonment: Australian Bureau of Statistics figures
show over three in four Indigenous prisoners have
been in jail before
Sam is one of the cohort from Long Bay committed
to Never Going Back. In his 30s and with a series of
hard knocks and heroin addiction behind him, he is
clear on what Shane’s program means to him:
I never imagined this day. A new start like this.
I’ve still got to walk through it, but Shane’s
opened the door for me.
In December 2016, Clean Slate Without Prejudice and
Never Going Back won gold at the Australian Crime
and Violence Prevention Awards which recognise
good practice in the prevention or reduction of
violence and other types of crime in Australia.
Tribal Warrior’s cultural cruises, run to fund its
community programs, are now an institution on
Sydney Harbour—despite, as Shane says, having
come about ‘in one of the weirdest ways’:
We were under the Harbour Bridge in the Tribal
Warrior boat, which flies an Aboriginal flag, with
a bunch of Aboriginal blokes doing some work,
when the Captain Cook cruise came past with a
group of kids onboard. They all started yelling,
‘Quick, look at the Aborigines!’
We cracked up laughing and then we thought,
‘Wow, why aren’t we telling the stories of
this harbour?’
It began from there. We had an idea but none
of us had any business acumen, we were just
a bunch of wannabes. But we were joined by
people who knew what they were doing, and
shared really important skills with us. Everything
from marketing and sales to our accounts and
our governance. Even the language around our
business, and how to fit products into the right
market segments.
2. STRENGTHENING INDIGENOUS ORGANISATIONS 35